Dr. John Clithero got back to me! Here are the questions I asked him as well as his responses:
To my knowledge, Dr. Daniel Kahneman is seen as one of the “fathers of Behavioral Economics.” Are there any works of his that have influenced you a lot? For example, a theory that you agree immensely with.
The obvious answer to this is Prospect Theory, which he wrote with the late Amos Tversky. Its effects are far reaching, even to this day. If we count books, his “Thinking, Fast and Slow” book is a lovely book. I used to use it when I taught Behavioral Economics at Pomona College. It’s a great read and a nice way for students to digest much of the literature without reading so many dense academic articles. It is not a perfect book, but I still reference it from time to time.
Contrary to the previous question, are there any of Kahneman’s work (or another famous behavioral economist such as Dr. Richard Thaler) that you disagree with? Or perhaps more broadly, are there any theories of yours that potentially may go more against the grain in the Behavioral Economics community?
Ironically, this also involves Kahneman’s book! There is a ton of popular writing on “System 1” vs “System 2” thinking. Kahneman admits himself this is an oversimplification of how the brain works. Still, it caught on and shows up all over the place. It’s more accurate to think of “many systems” all working within the same organ, the brain.
What do you love most about Behavioral Economics, or more loosely, the academic fields that study the world of humans and our decision-making?
I used to tell my students that Behavioral Economics is really a tool, not a topic. It can be applied to virtually any domain of Economics. As concepts become more widely understood and appreciated, it will grow. Eventually, we won’t need a college class in Behavioral Economics, I hope, because it will be everywhere in the major!
Where do you immediately see promise in the application of Behavioral Economics in other fields? I ask this because I recently wrote a “law,” attempting to apply some BE concepts in a public policy setting involving data privacy (which I can send to you if you’d like).
Law is certainly one. I like that it has opened up more opportunities for interdisciplinary work with Psychology, Marketing, Finance, to name a few. Medicine, also, as medical decision making is filled with decision biases, both on the patient and doctor side.
Is there anything else you’d like to include about the field of Behavioral Economics as a whole?
It is a wonderful thing for students to study. Very applicable to everyday life for most people. The more we can have an understanding of our own cognitive limits, the better off we will be!
Here is the analysis portion of these interview findings:
Dr. Clithero is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business. He relates to my topic because he has previously done research in Behavioral Economics and taught classes on it at Pomona College.
I decided to interview Dr. Clithero because he’s an alumni from Pomona College and has previously been a professor there! I wanted to try and establish a connection with my future school :)
I think the most vital information Dr. Clithero provided was how oversimplified the usage of “System 1 and 2” actually is. So far, I’ve been using these two terms pretty loosely so perhaps it would be worth investing some effort to further investigate its intricacies. I think another piece that helped was calling BE a “tool” to be utilized, and giving some examples of fields of where it could be most prevalently used. For example, the decision biases in the medical field could easily apply to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
For a personal takeaway on this interview, it went pretty smoothly! Dr. Clithero responded swiftly and congratulated me on my admittance to Pomona. Albeit, perhaps more detailed responses would’ve been better.
Some new questions I have from this conversation are definitely the applications of BE in the medical field. With my last SDA, I thought public policy was the clear field where BE could be applied, and I somehow forgot about the medical field. With COVID-19, this could definitely lead to an interesting final project, so I’ll have to investigate more about the connections between these two things.