Two related trends have created novel challenges for managing risk in the United States. The first trend is a series of dramatic changes in liability law as tort law has expanded to assign liability to defendants for reasons other than negligence. The unpredictability of future costs induced by changes in tort law may be partly responsible for the second major trend known as the liability crisis' - the disappearance of liability protection in markets for particularly unpredictable risks. This book examines decisions people make about insurance and liability. An understanding of such decision making may help explain why the insurance crisis resulted from the new interpretations of tort law and what to do about it. The articles cover three kinds of decisions: consumer decisions to purchase insurance; insurer decisions about coverage they offer; and the decisions of the public about the liability rules they prefer, which are reflected in legislation and regulation. For each of these three kinds of decisions, normative theories such as expected utility theory can be used as benchmarks against which actual decisions are judged.

Two related trends have created novel challenges for managing risk in the United States. The first trend is a series of dramatic changes in liability law as tort law has expanded to assign liability to defendants for reasons other than negligence. The unpredictability of future costs induced by changes in tort law may be partly responsible for the second major trend known as the liability crisis' - the disappearance of liability protection in markets for particularly unpredictable risks. This book examines decisions people make about insurance and liability. An understanding of such decision making may help explain why the insurance crisis resulted from the new interpretations of tort law and what to do about it. The articles cover three kinds of decisions: consumer decisions to purchase insurance; insurer decisions about coverage they offer; and the decisions of the public about the liability rules they prefer, which are reflected in legislation and regulation. For each of these three kinds of decisions, normative theories such as expected utility theory can be used as benchmarks against which actual decisions are judged.

"Colin Camerer's "Behavioral Game Theory" fills an important niche in the literature. It brings together and synthesizes a large body of experimental and theoretical work on multi-person interactions, in psychology as well as economics. The result is a theory of games enriched by empirical knowledge and significantly closer to what is needed for applications. Camerer's book will make an outstanding principal or supplementary text for graduate or advanced undergraduate courses in game theory and experimental economics."--Vincent Crawford, University of California, San Diego

"Behavioral economics has become very popular and of growing interest both within economics and in social science more generally. It integrates the rational maximizing behavior characteristic of economic models with objectives and beliefs characteristic of sociology and psychology in new and useful ways. Thus, it is increasingly relevant in framing issues such as tax policy, income redistribution, auctions, crime, and drug addiction. In this excellent and welcome work, "Behavioral Game Theory," Colin Camerer brings his impressive breadth of knowledge to bear on the behavioral economics of strategic interaction, and thus on the field itself. This book will induce scholars, graduate students, and young social scientists alike to work in this burgeoning and exciting area of intellectual pursuit."--Herbert Gintis, University of Massachusetts and the Santa Fe Institute

"Colin Camerer's "Behavioral Game Theory" is a major achievement. Nothing like it is available thus far, and the author is uniquely qualified to have written it. He has an impressive understanding of both psychology and economics. He has taken thetrouble to 'talk through' hundreds of tricky arguments that elsewhere just get stated mathematically. Rarer still is his positive attitude toward modeling, experimentation, econometrics, and other methodologies. If his book invests others with the same open-minded, synergistic outlook, that alone would make it worthwhile."--David G. Pearce, Yale University

"This is a terrific book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. In addition to its substantive findings, it contains a wealth of wise methodological insights, generously sprinkled with relevant and stimulating anecdotes."--Jon Elster, Columbia University

"Behavioral economics has won whatever intellectual war was fought. It has won in the sense that it has been shown to be superior to the conventional alternatives wherever there has been an evidentiary contest. In a deeper sense, however, there was no war-simply standard science, in which the current generation of scholars builds on and expands the work of previous generations. The work of implementing these advances has only begun. This book explains the nature of the advances to those in economics who were locked away in their workshops while the intellectual contest was being waged and may be unaware of what has happened."--Henry J. Aaron, The Brookings Institution

"It is certainly time that a book such as this be published. This volume will be a 'one-stop shop' for learning about behavioral economics and is likely to be adopted in graduate course in behavioral economics (and may even encourage people to offer such a course). The introductory chapter does a good job of explaining the enterprise, behavioral economics, and providing some history and context."--Linda Babcock, Carnegie Mellon University, coauthor of "Women Don't Ask"

Twenty years ago, behavioral economics did not exist as a field. Most economists were deeply skeptical--even antagonistic--toward the idea of importing insights from psychology into their field. Today, behavioral economics has become virtually mainstream. It is well represented in prominent journals and top economics departments, and behavioral economists, including several contributors to this volume, have garnered some of the most prestigious awards in the profession.

This book assembles the most important papers on behavioral economics published since around 1990. Among the 25 articles are many that update and extend earlier foundational contributions, as well as cutting-edge papers that break new theoretical and empirical ground.

"Advances in Behavioral Economics" will serve as the definitive one-volume resource for those who want to familiarize themselves with the new field or keep up-to-date with the latest developments. It will not only be a core text for students, but will be consulted widely by professional economists, as well as psychologists and social scientists with an interest in how behavioral insights are being applied in economics.

The articles, which follow Colin Camerer and George Loewenstein's introduction, are by the editors, George A. Akerlof, Linda Babcock, Shlomo Benartzi, Vincent P. Crawford, Peter Diamond, Ernst Fehr, Robert H. Frank, Shane Frederick, Simon Gachter, David Genesove, Itzhak Gilboa, Uri Gneezy, Robert M. Hutchens, Daniel Kahneman, Jack L. Knetsch, David Laibson, Christopher Mayer, Terrance Odean, Ted O'Donoghue, Aldo Rustichini, David Schmeidler, Klaus M. Schmidt, Eldar Shafir, Hersh M. Shefrin, Chris Starmer, Richard H. Thaler, Amos Tversky, and Janet L. Yellen."