Readings in neuroeconomics

During the spring of 2009 I organized a course course entitled “Neuroeconomics”, together with Prof.s Elke Weber and Eric Johnson. In this course, we made a compendium of articles on neuroeconomics. Fortunately, almost all of those papers were to be found on the web.

Here, I bring you the list of articles we used for the course. This, consider this as a suggestion for required readings for those interested in neuroeconomics

Overall/introductions

Clithero JA, Tankersley D, Huettel SA (2008) Foundations of neuroeconomics: from philosophy to practice. PLoS Biol. Nov 25; 6(11): e298

Schultz W (2008) Introduction. Neuroeconomics: the promise and the profit. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. Dec 12; 363(1511): 3767-9

Risk and ambiguity

Weber EU, Johnson EJ. 2008. Decisions under uncertainty: Psychological, economic and neuroeconomic explanations of risk preference. In Neuroeconomics: Decision Making and the Brain, ed. P Glimcher, C Camerer, E Fehr, R Poldrack. New York: Elsevier

Loewenstein, G.F., Weber, E.U., Hsee, C., & Welch, N. (2001).  Risk as feelings.  Psychological Bulletin, 127, 267-286.

Weber, E. U., Shafir, S., & Blais, A.-R. (2004). Predicting risk-sensitivity in humans and lower animals: Risk as variance or coefficient of variation. Psychological Review, 111, 430-445.

Hsu et al., Neural systems responding to degrees of uncertainty in human decision-making. Science. 2005 Dec 9;310(5754):1680-3.

Huettel, et al., Neural signatures of economic preferences for risk and ambiguity. Neuron. 2006 Mar 2;49(5):765-75.

Johnson EJ, Haubl G, Keinan A. 2007. Aspects of endowment: A query theory of value construction. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition 33:461-74.

Tom, S. M., Fox, C. R., Trepel, C., & Poldrack, R. A. (2007). The neural basis of loss aversion in decision-making under risk. Science, 315, 515-518.

Parsons, L.M. & Osherson, D. (2001).  New evidence for distinct right and left brain systems for deductive versus probabilistic reasoning.  Cerebral Cortex, 11, 954-965.

Huettel et al (2005).  Decisions under uncertainty: Probabilistic context influences activation of prefrontal and parietal cortices.  The Journal of Neuroscience, 25, 3304-3311.

Intertemporal choice

Frederick, S., Loewenstein, G., & O’Donoghue, T. (2004).  Time discounting and time preference: A critical review.  Chapter 1 in G. Loewenstein, D. Read & R.F. Baumeister (Eds.), Time and Decision: Economic and Psychological Perspectives on Intertemporal Choice.

Weber, E. U., Johnson, E. J., Milch, K., Chang, H., Brodscholl, J., & Goldstein, D. (2007). Asymmetric discounting in intertemporal choice: A query theory account. Psychological Science, 18, 516-523.

McClure et al., Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science. 2004 Oct 15;306(5695):503-

Reward and economic value

Kahneman, D., Wakker, P.P. & Sarin, R. (1997).  Back to Bentham?  Explorations of Experienced Utility.  Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112, 375-405.

Schultz, W.  Multiple reward signals in the brain. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2000 Dec;1(3):199-207.

Padoa-Schioppa & Assad, Neurons in the orbitofrontal cortex encode economic value. Nature. 2006 Apr 23

De Martino B, Kumaran D, Holt B, Dolan RJ (2009) The neurobiology of reference-dependent value computation. J Neurosci.  Mar 25; 29(12): 3833-42

Models and theories

Bechara & Damasio. The somatic marker hypothesis: A neural theory of economic decision.  Games and Economic Behavior, 52, 336-372.

Kuhnen & Knutston, The neural basis of financial risk taking. Neuron. 2005 Sep 1;47(5):763-70.

Yechiam et al., Using cognitive models to map relations between neuropsychological disorders and human decision-making deficits. Psychol Sci. 2005 Dec;16(12):973-8.

Camile, N., Coricelli, G., Sallet, J., Pradat-Diehl, P., Duhamel, J-R, & Sirigu, A. (2004).  Involvement of the orbitofrontal cortex in the experience of regret.  Science, 304, 1167-1170.

Strategic interactions

Camerer, C.F. (2005). Behavioral game theory: Predicting human behavior in strategic interactions.  Chapter 13 in C.Camerer, G. Loewenstein & M. Rabin (Eds.) Advances in Behavioral Economics.  Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Camerer, C.F. (2003).  Strategizing in the brain.  Science, 300, 1673-1675.
Sanfey et al., The neural basis of economic decision-making in the Ultimatum Game. Science. 2003 Jun 13;300(5626):1755-8.