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The renaissance of belief-based utility in economics

Nature Human Behaviour volume 2, pages 166–167 (2018)Cite this article

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Why isn’t there a strong relation between income and happiness? Why do people avoid or seek self-confirmatory or even false information? Why do they play the lottery and buy insurance? Taking account of belief-based utility can enable economics to make sense of these and a multitude of other puzzling phenomena.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank R. Bénabou, A. Imas, B. Kőszegi, E. Carbone and C. Taylor for their valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    George Loewenstein & Andras Molnar

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  1. George Loewenstein
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  2. Andras Molnar
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Correspondence to George Loewenstein.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Loewenstein, G., Molnar, A. The renaissance of belief-based utility in economics. Nat Hum Behav 2, 166–167 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0301-z

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