Good afternoon everyone. There you go. Thank you very much. I'm David Lang.  Now, please allow me to introduce you to yourself. As an economist, I'm actually in the perfect position to do so. And at some point, the slide will move, right?  There you go. You know, one of my favorite professors once said, "It is our  choices that show what we truly are far more than our abilities."  

Professor Dumbledore 

This is a professor you might know as well. He's quite well known. Um, he was  deeply beloved by his students. Unfortunately, he met his end. He was actually  killed by one of his colleagues, believe it or not. I give you Professor  Dumbledore. Now, what Professor Dumbledore and I would argue is we are  really nothing more than a collection of the choices that we make. And we make  choices every single day from the mundane like how am I going to spend this  afternoon to the more life-defining like how am I going to spend my life? I for one have chosen to spend this afternoon here with you giving this talk. And I choose  to spend my life on a combination of being an economics professor, spending as much time with my wife and children as I possibly can, and then at the poker  table every moment other than those. So who is it that actually is studying  human behavior and choices?  

Who is it 

Well, psychologists of course study this. They would claim that human behavior  and choices is a result or governed by our individual's psyche. Sociologists also  study this and they would claim that our interactions with others and our place in the social structure is really what is determining our human behavior and  

choices. But of course, I'm here today to tell you that in addition to that, it's really economists who are really doing some of the work on this as well. Now, what  would economists have to say about human behavior and choices? Well, we  would say that our behavior and choices, there you go, is largely predictable  given some very basic parameters and concepts. This is probably worth pointing out that economists are generally considered the more egotistical of the social  sciences to think that we can actually do this. Economists would state that an  individual's objective is simply to maximize their utility subject to some set of  constraints. Having said that, not everyone is making exactly the same choices.  But what does this mean? Our goal, it means that individuals are going to  choose to make themselves as happy as they possibly can given the constraints that are in front of them. Okay. So why are things so different than across  people? Right? We don't see that people are making the same choices. 

Rationality 

The key assumption of economics that allows us to even start this conversation  is one of rationality. We assume that individual people are rational. I know some 

of you are thinking, well, not my boyfriend, not my girlfriend, not my mom, right?  But when it comes down to it, that comes that's because we as economists have a very different definition of rationality than is usually used among non economists. Economists will state that people doing what is in their best  interests given the information before them. That's what we mean by rationality.  In other words, if we witness someone actually making a choice, engaging in  some behavior, we assume that that is the result of some internal cost/benefit  analysis that's taking place. Now that doesn't mean that you are actually  consciously sitting down and making these calculations but rather that you are  acting as if you are. This assumption of rationality is really what allows us to  move forward. Without that we just assume people are just random actors doing random sort of things. Okay.  

Constraints 

So as I mentioned the people are going to do what is in their best interests and  try to maximize their happiness given their constraints. So what are these  constraints? I'm going to give you three of them today. The first one is that we  are constrained by our money or resources. This is to suggest that there's only  so much money in our bank account at any given point in time and therefore we  meet need to make choices about how we're going to spend that money. We're  also of course constrained by our time. There's only 24 hours in the day. Once  you use it, it's gone. And so time is another way in which we are constrained.  The third item is one that's not as often discussed in the economic literature, but  we're also constrained by our intellect. We only have so much mental capacity  at any given point in time. We can acquire more, but today you only have so  much. If after my presentation you catch me in the lobby and you're so inspired  by my talk that you're going to ask me, David, what is the meaning of life? I just  don't know that answer today. Give me a couple days and I'll get back to you.  Okay. Nonetheless, even with the same amount of time and money and even  with the same amount of intellect and even if we assume that everyone is acting rationally, we still see different choices. And my claim here today is that many of  those choices are the result of three very specific what I'm calling behavioral  defining parameters. The first of those is time preferences. The second will be  risk aversion and the third is altruism and I'll take you through those one at a  time. Time preferences. So we often are put into situations where the choices  we make are involving costs and benefits that play out over time where we don't  just get instant costs and benefits but there's some time that passes. So, for  example, should I take some money and save it for my future? Or should I take  that same amount of money and go on a very expensive vacation? Should I get  a job immediately after a bachelor's degree? Or should I instead go to graduate  school and kind of look out for my future self perhaps a little more than my  present self? 

Risk Aversion 

Second, we have risk aversion. Many of the decisions we make involve some  degree of risk or uncertainty. Right? Risk aversion is about how much we're  willing to tolerate this risk or uncertainty when we're making our choices. For  example, when I'm celebrating the end of my TED talk experience today and I  go home, should I spend that at the rest of my day skydiving or should I take  that time and sit on the couch and watch television? Should I take extra money that I have and invest it in a biotech startup company? Or should I take that same amount of money and put it into treasury bonds? The most likely answer  to those questions for me is that I'm not going to be skydiving. You'll find me on  the couch watching TV. And that as soon as I have spare money, I'm not  investing in either of those things. It'll probably at the poker table, right? As it  turns out, risk aversion for me is a very complicated topic because while I am incredibly risk avoiding when it comes to my personal safety, I am risk-seeking when it comes to my money.  

Altruism 

Altruism is the third parameter that I wanted to discuss. Many of the choices we  make involve trade-offs between things that benefit ourselves, however we  define ourselves, could be just you or your family or household, but benefits to  ourselves versus benefits to others. For example, should I take a spare $100  that I have and go buy another pair of shoes? Or should I take that $100 and  instead give it to charity? Should I take the education that I acquired and  became becoming a PhD economist? Should I take that skill set and go become a venture capitalist or should I become a professor at a public university of  higher learning? These are factors that relate to how much we're willing to trade  off benefits to ourselves and benefits to others.  

Scale 

So imagine if you would that we have some set of scales here, right? Ranging from 0 to 100, 0 to 10 where in the blue scale we have some measure  of patience or your preferences regarding time. The green being your feelings regarding risk aversion from the very risk averse to the risk loving on the other  side of the scale. And finally, altruism from zero up to 10 as well. Take a second  and try to place yourself kind of on these different scales. Get a feel for where  you might reside. Is there a link between these? So for example, are we more  likely to see someone who is a 10 in terms of their patience to also be a 10 in  terms of their feelings about risk or about altruism? Or is it in completely the

behavioral economics where these folks are in the process of trying to unravel  that sort of thing. What is certainly true, however, is that these things taken  together certainly influence a lot of the more significant decisions that we might  have to make in any given lifetime. Choices like what kind of college major  should I choose or what kind of job should I seek or who should I be married to? What should I be looking for in a partner? Or how many children should I have?  These are all factors that involve trade-offs between now and later. Various  degrees of risk, benefits to self, benefits to others. In conclusion, why should we care, right?  

Why Care 

Why are you sitting here listening to me? Other than the fact that, you know, the  drums are really cool and we've got other stuff coming after me, right? Why  should we care about this? Well, economists certainly care about this. We as  economists care about this because we're in the business of trying to put  together strong theories and models that have really good predictive power.  We're trying to explain human behavior. We want to do a good job of doing that.  The best way to do that is to know about these parameters. Notice how that  feeds back into the ego of the economist. You should care about these  parameters for yourself. By knowing these these pieces of information about  yourself, you are able to make more efficient, more timely decisions. You're able  to kind of ignore or avoid activities that go against the parameters as they relate  to you. You can match better when it comes to jobs, when it comes to partners, when it comes to how you're going to spend your weekend if you know a little bit something about yourself. We also want to know this information about others. And by others, I mean you want to know it about those that you're  particularly close to, your family, your friends, to help them make better  decisions in their own lives. That's certainly great. Of course, you have to be  pretty altruistic to care in that direction. However, we also want to know this  information about people that we have less intimate relationships with potential  employers, for example, knowing that a potential employer might be willing to  wait a while to hire someone when you're interviewing with them, even though  you might be very impatient and need the job right now, is certainly going to  benefit you during the bargaining process. Okay, microeconomics and  economics in general is best in my opinion when it helps us understand  ourselves and why we make the decisions that we make. I really hope you take  the time to try to know yourself almost as well as economists think that they  already know you. All right. Thank you. 



Última modificación: jueves, 2 de julio de 2026, 09:34