Behavioral economics
The study of behavioral economics really began to develop in the middle and towards the end of the 20th century. Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman wrote a paper called “Prospect Theory,” which was about how the way choices are presented to somebody is just as important as the choices themselves when an individual is making a decision. Later, Hersh Shefrin and Richard Thaler created a savings model which explains how people do not figure out how much to save and spend to stay at a constant level. People would rather spend more now, because humans prefer gratification in the near future. By 1994, Harvard University hired a professor to teach behavioral economics as its own subject. Now, behavioral economics helps explain many complex things that people do. There are many applications of the research, such as how to make public policy more effective or marketing and advertising applications. Also, there are other areas of study branching off from behavioral economics, like behavioral finance, which deals with how people make investments.