ABSTRACT
The links between economic and psychological theories of learning have evolved along different paths – economic theories via insights from game theory, and psychological theories from a rich and varied range of sub-disciplines. This chapter explores how economic models of learning and behavioural psychology connect. C. F. Camerer observes, economic theory sometimes neglects questions of learning. Camerer and K. Weigelt emphasize the importance of learning in experimental games, for example in trust games, public goods games and beauty contests. Camerer also outlines some characteristics of a good learning theory: it should be parsimonious, it should have predictive power and coherence but at the same time it should reveal new insights. Learning theories can be grouped into a few broad categories: evolutionary approaches, and reinforcement versus belief learning models experience-weighted attraction model. Other learning models include anticipatory learning models, which assume sophistication, imitative learning, learning direction theory and rule-based learning.
