Everyday Decision Making: A Theoretical and Empirical Study

by Kamila Danilowicz-Gösele
Doctoral thesis
Date of Examination:2016-12-19
Date of issue:2017-04-24
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Robert Schwager
Referee:Prof. Dr. Robert Schwager
Referee:Prof. Dr. Thushyanthan Baskaran
Persistent Address: http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-6253

 

 

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Abstract

English

The thesis „Everyday Decision Making: A Theoretical and Empirical Study“ analyzes the individuals' decision-making and the role of institutions in creating incentives and influencing individuals' choices. The first part is descriptive and theoretical and deeply rooted in behavioral public economics. It aims at understanding how people make decisions and the factors that affect their decision-making process. Therefore, Chapter 2 provides a critical discussion on the validity of the neoclassical rationality paradigm as a normative standard and discusses the need of the alternative, behavioral approach to bounded irrationality. Chapter 3 examines individuals' behavior regarding healthy good consumption by conducting a theoretical analysis of government's intervention in the decision-making of individuals with self-control problems. The second part of this thesis provides an empirical analysis of higher education and is at the heart of research in economics of education. It focuses on the interaction between individuals' characteristics and choices that determine their performance within a given institutional framework, namely university. Chapter 4 examines individual and institutional factors, e.g. the high school leaving grade or the chosen field of study, as determinants of students' academic performance at university. Chapter 5 empirically analyzes professors' effect from a fundamental first-year course in Economics on students' later performance in follow-on courses. It focuses on the differences in grading policies between different professors assigned to the same mandatory course.
Keywords: behavioral economics; time-inconsistent preferences; self-control problems; paternalism; subsidies; academic performance; higher education; grade point average; faculties; professor's effect; grade inflation; grades; bounded rationality
 
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