Special issue of Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly the Journal of Socio-Economics) on Cognitive Abilities and Economic Behavior

Special Issue Editors:

Pablo Brañas-Garza (Middlesex University London, Professor of Behavioural Economics)

John Smith (Rutgers University-Camden, Associate Professor)

It is a fundamental goal of economics to better understand and better predict economic behavior.  One of the challenges in this endeavor is to account for the observed heterogeneity of behavior.  Researchers are increasingly regarding cognitive abilities as a key component in understanding this heterogeneity.  As such, the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (JoBEE) announces a special issue on Cognitive Abilities and Economic Behavior. 

The issue will seek to highlight the diversity and the quality of the current research in this emerging line of inquiry.  By assembling a collection of state-of-the-art papers in a single issue we hope to promote additional research on the topic and to help guide theoretical improvements.

We encourage the submission of experimental or empirical papers that employ explicit measures of cognitive ability (for instance, the cognitive reflection test, the Raven test, or other such measures) or implicit measures of cognitive ability (for instance, digit ratios, SAT scores, or other such measures). 

We also encourage the submission of studies that examine strategic or nonstrategic behavior. The nonstrategic behavior under consideration could include, but is not limited to, choices involving risk and choices involving payoffs across time periods. The strategic behavior under consideration could include, but is not limited to, the analysis of equilibrium or cognitive hierarchy models, observations within a particular game or across different types of games, and the effect of information regarding the cognitive ability of the other subjects.

In order to provide a balanced overview of the research, we also encourage the submission of studies that investigate but do not find a significant relationship between cognitive abilities and economic behavior.
 

Submission information

The due date for submission of manuscripts is November 1, 2014, but papers can be submitted earlier and the review process will start immediately after submission.  Only original papers that are not currently under review or published in other journals may be submitted. Prior submission of abstracts is not required. However, the editors welcome inquiries from authors about the appropriateness of their project for the special issue.

Follow the guidelines for authors and submit the manuscript via JoBEE’s online submission system (see http://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-behavioral-and-experimental-...).  Indicate that the submission is for the special issue on Cognitive Abilities and Economic Behavior. 

For questions, contact John Smith ([email protected])