Understanding Economic Behaviour

may be related to another basic assumption in economic psychology: that the human capacity to process information from the environment is limited, and that the kind of optimal use of that information postulated in many economic theories is therefore not possible. The research methods used are mainly geared towards empirical research, and there mostly towards survey research and experimentation. Experimentation involves most often simulated behaviour in a laboratory, which allows the experimental manipulation of possible causes of behaviour which would not be possible in real life. Survey research is the most widely used instrument for investigating real-world behaviour, with all its caveats about establishing causal explanations. Several introductory books (e. g. , Fumham & Lewis, 1986; Lea, Tarpy, & Webley, 1987; van Raaij, van Veldhoven, & Wlimeryd, 1988) and articles (e. g. , van Raaij, 1979; Wiswede, 1988) have appeared recently, which try to give an overview of the field of economic psychology, and which, in varying degrees, demonstrate the three foundations of economic psychology just mentioned. Others have concentrated on certain subtopics, such as the psychology of the labour market (e. g. , Baxter, 1988; Pelzmann, 1986).

to the Volume.- I: Economic Factors and Individual Satisfaction.- National Wealth and Individual Happiness.- Beliefs about Attainment of Life Satisfaction as Determinants of Preferences for Everyday Activities.- Need for Achievement and Entrepreneurial Activity in Small Firms.- The Kibbutz and Private Property.- II: Inflation, Unemployment, and Taxation.- Perceptions of Inflation.- Cross-Sectional Evidence on the Rationality of the Mean and Variance of Inflation Expectations.- The Perceived Causal Structure of Unemployment.- A Cross-National Comparison of Attitudes, Personality, Behaviour, and Social Comparison in Tax Evasion Experiments.- Perception and Judgment of Marginal Tax Rates After a Tax Reduction.- III: Utility and Decision Theory.- Beyond the Expected Utility Proposition in Rational Decision Making.- Levels of Aspiration, Promises, and the Possibility of Revaluation.- Another Attitude Towards Multi-Attribute Attitude Theories.- Application of the Valence-Instrumentality-Expectancy and Multiattribute Utility Models in the Prediction of Worker Effort.- Prediction of Preference Reversals by the Linearized Moments Model.- Economic Man or Social Man - Exploring Free Riding in the Production of Collective Goods.- IV: Consumer Behaviour.- From the Consumption of Necessities to Experience-Seeking Consumption.- Personality Traits as Elements in a Model of Eating Behaviour.- The "New Values" and Consumer Behaviour - Some Empirical Findings From Austria.- Understanding Children's Economic Socialization.- A Model of Consumer Behaviour in the Situation of Shortages.- V: New Views on Economic Analysis.- The Quantitative Analysis of Economic Behavior With Laboratory Animals.- Subjectivism in Economics - A Suggested Reorientation.