This chapter provides an overview of heuristics, shortcuts that reduce the search necessary to find a solution to a problem. It notes that initially, studies of heuristics dealt almost exclusively with cognitive processes, but they have come to incorporate emotional factors as well. Heuristics...

Animal Spirits (2009) is a timely and widely appreciated work focusing on the need to incorporate behavioral factors in macroeconomic analysis that draws on a famous reference of John Maynard Keynes. Nonetheless, it has a number of limitations. Those in several chapters are noted. Most...

These are the notes from the first half of the course in behavioral economics offered at the School of Social Sciences of the University of the Republic in Uruguay in November 2014. This part of the course, entirely verbal, was aimed at outlining the essentials of behavioral economics. The...