Eldar Shafir

Role
Class of 1987 Professor in Behavioral Science and Public Policy
Office Phone
Office
531 Peretsman Scully Hall
Education

Ph.D., Massachusettes Institute of Technology

Bio/Description

Main areas of interest include reasoning, judgment, and decision-making, and issues related to behavioral economics, with an emphasis on descriptive studies of how people make judgments and decisions in situations of conflict and uncertainty. What strategies do people employ in arriving at their decisions? Do these strategies lead to systematic biases and predictable errors? And what do these tell us about the way the mind processes the relevant information? A central theme is the tension between normative assumptions and behavioral findings. Most recently, the focus has been on decision making in the context of poverty and, more generally, on the application of behavioral research to policy.