Introduction to A Research Agenda for Economic Psychology

Economic psychology studies the fundamentals of perception and understanding of economic phenomena and economic thought and behaviour. It is an interdisciplinary field of research, partly overlapping with behavioural economics and strongly related to socio-economics. Scholars in the field laid the foundations more than a century ago, studying work and organizational behaviour, consumer decision-making and selected topics of public economics. Today, economic psychology deals with cognitive dynamics and decision-making in general, lay theories of economics, marketing and consumer behaviour, household financial decisions, labour markets, entrepreneurship, work and unemployment, shadow economy and tax behaviour, and wealth and well-being. Besides focusing on the cognitive drivers of decision-making, economic psychology also considers emotions and economic behaviour such as greed and envy, fear and anger, and positive feelings such as satisfaction and well-being. The volume editors have selected contributions to these topics and provide in the introduction a short overview of the history of economic psychology. The chapters are briefly introduced, emphasizing future directions of research and potential contributions to contemporary society challenges.