- 373 | Colin Camerer on the Neuroscience of Economic Thinking

Economics often starts with an assumption that people are rational maximizers of their own self-interest; but it doesn't stop there. Economists do understand that sometimes people are irrational, altruistic, or just random. So how can we understand how people actually do behave in economic circumstances? Colin Camerer is a pioneer of "neuroeconomics" -- not only understanding how people make economic choices, but relating it to processes in the brain.

Blog post with transcript: https://preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2026/11/02/373-colin-camerer-on-the-neuroscience-of-economic-thinking/

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Colin Camerer received a Ph.D. in behavioral decision theory from the University of Chicago. He is currently the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics, T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience Leadership Chair, and Director, T&C Chen Center for Social and Decision Neuroscience at Caltech. He has been awarded a MacArthur fellowship among other awards. He is the author of Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction.

* Web site

* Caltech web page

* Google Scholar publications

* Bluesky

* Wikipedia