ABSTRACT
Over the past decade or so, social psychology and economics have established increasingly close interactions. In previous times, there were certainly some economists interested in integrating theories and concepts from social psychology into their own discipline but they had no impact on the field. The situation today is much different. Economic psychology, or psychological economics-or as it is also sometimes called, behavioral economics-has become one of the “hot” fields in economics and attracts scholars from the best universities. Accordingly, the state of knowledge has advanced, as indicated by several recent reviews (e.g., Frey & Stutzer, 2001; Mullainanthan & Thaler, 2000; Rabin, 1998). The award in 2002 of the Nobel Prize in economics to the psychologist Daniel Kahneman gave an “official” stamp of approval, and high publicity, to this interdisciplinary endeavor.
