• AEA in the news
  • December 29, 2016

The Best Films of 2016 (for Behavioral Economists)

Tasha Tuvango/Bigstock

A Bloomberg View column about behavioral economics concepts in this year’s best films highlighted a 2014 piece from the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. In The Control Premium: A Preference for Payoff Autonomy, the authors ask experiment participants to bet money on either themselves or a partner answering a quiz question correctly. Participants opt to bet on themselves more than expected, possibly because they would like to feel they are in control of their own fate.