ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines some case studies – including neuroeconomic analyses of prospect theory, time inconsistency, addiction, learning, social preferences and social emotions. In terms of background neuroeconomic evidence, lesion patient studies show damage to the prefrontal cortex is associated with more impulsive behaviour. P. W. Glimcher et al. present an alternative neuroeconomic interpretation to S. M. McClure et al. Neuroeconomic studies can illuminate the biases that underlie decision-making in uncertain situations by identifying the neural correlates of analytical thought and assessing the extent to which these areas are engaged during ordinary decision-making and learning. In addition to providing new research tools, neuroeconomics may offer new theoretical approaches that blend insights from different economic models and escape the binary classification of herding into rational versus non-rational. Neuroeconomic testing of belief learning models is more difficult because of the problem of empirically capturing the belief learning function.
