After presenting last Thursday on behavioral economics in general, with no real thesis besides "irrationality," I think I've finally gathered enough information to focus in on a real topic. Presenting was actually very helpful, as the class seemed involved and ready to help me with ideas. A lot of people liked the Tiger Woods/celebrity approach to irrationality (excess money = power trip, reckless behavior). Others said I should take one aspect of behavioral economics (framing, anchoring, hyperbolic discounting, etc) and explore just that. But the topic that I feel will be the most enlightening/beneficial/interesting is personal savings. If I use this topic as the base of my paper (perhaps focusing on how this played into the economic/housing crisis), I can branch off into many different aspects of behavioral economics. I can use hyperbolic discounting (which is, again, how people tend to regard present time as much more valuable than future time) from behavioral economics, promises/promise breaking from psychology, and facts and figures about savings/the economic crisis from economics. Also, savings will provide me with plenty of examples and experiments that are mildly related to the topic, so I doubt that I will run out of things to discuss.
Also:
Here is the video that I showed a clip of during my presentation. The full clip is very interesting, I just didn't have time to show it all during class.
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