ECON30019: Behavioural Economics

Assignments, 4 × 5%
Group Presentation, 10%
Tutorial Participation, 5%
2 Hour Exam, 65% (Hurdle Requirement)

Pretty straightforward, 3-4 questions similar to tute/assignment questions that we had about 2 weeks to work on. Don't know if this will be continued, but in 2019 when I did this subject, to prevent people copying each other's work and encourage people to actually give it a proper go, marks were based solely on if we put the effort in, showing full working ect! I got things objectively wrong and still secured the full 20%, and from what I heard many others were in the same boat That being said, they still served as good practice for the exam.

Overall, if you've done and enjoyed Intro and Inter Micro, and are looking for a relatively easy and light elective/breadth, this one would be a good choice. It was also pretty interesting as it extended on some standard (neoclassical) economic models, and introduced the behavioural versions, making them (somewhat) applicable to the real world.

Topics:
1. Introduction
2. Preferences and Choices
3. Beliefs and Probability Judgement
4. Choice under Risk and Uncertainty
5. Intertemporal Choice
6. Behavioural Public Policy
7. Fairness and Social Preferences

A few harder questions, but overall I didn't find it too bad (although I don't know my mark yet!). I don't think the lack of past exams would have impacted anyone's score. Exam mainly involved applying the knowledge rather than memorising things and no major surprises which was great.

There are 6 behavioural economics based papers available on the LMS in the tutorial section. At the start of the semester, you're required to form groups within your tutorial and let your tutor know your preference of paper (according to my tutor all the papers were all of equal difficulty). From there, you and your group need to present a paper one week during the second half of the semester (each particular paper was allocated a week). An outline was given about what to talk about regarding the paper, then your group needed to create their own application of the main theory discussed in the paper.

Yes, with screen capture

Siqi Pan

Mainly involved Siqi talking through and explaining the slides. I feel she explained things well and added onto what you would have just gotten by reading through the slides, so definitely worth listening to or attending lectures. Assignment answers were also talked through during lectures (worked solutions also given though), and we did a few behavioural experiments/surveys. As I mentioned above, this subject was relatively light in content, and even with the assignment discussions and surveys, lectures pretty much always started later and finished earlier than the standard 5 min after/before advertised times.

A bit different the usual ECON tute participation mark scheme. In each of the 5 weeks there was a group presentation that wasn't our own, we were required to read the paper and make 2 comments/questions/critiques ect. on it and hand this in to our tutor. Our participation marks are based on these submitted comments. Presumably each sheet of comments handed into our tutor was 1%, but this wasn't explicitly stated and I didn't think to ask.

No, standard advice was that tute/assignment/lecture questions were enough. I also found some old exams (2011 was earliest) on library website but these were hardly relevant.

4 Out of 5

Nothing is required, the subject references certain books outlined in first lecture, but they're definitely not needed.

Standard tutorials from weeks 1-5 where you'd get a tute sheet before, are encouraged to give it a go beforehand, then the tutor would take the class through it during the tute. From week 6-11, the first half of the tute would involve a group presentation and questions/discussions, and then the second half would be back to the standard format where the tutor goes over the tute work.

(per week) 1 × 2 hour lecture, 1 × 1 hour tutorial

Semester 2, 2019

H1 (87)