The Making of Behavioral Development Economics

A core insight of behavioral economics is that we are “fast thinkers†; very little human thinking resembles the rational, deliberate type that charac-terizes homo economicus. What is less well recognized is that our innate reliance on cognitive shortcuts means that mental models—categories, concepts, narratives, and worldviews—profoundly influence our decision making by unconsciously shaping what we perceive and the “toolbox†of strategies we draw on to respond. Many researchers have connected this idea to economic development, yet they rarely identify their work as “behavioral†economics. We use recent research to show how a second strand of behavioral economics illuminates the tight interlinkages between preferences, culture, and institutions and brings the discipline almost full circle back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century perspectives. We caution against the strong reductionist tendencies that attempt to squeeze sociological influences on decision making into a rational-agent model.