On August 16, 2019 Kolba Lab organized an amazing event dedicated to a unique profession “Behavioral Economics.”, in the framework of the project “Future skills and jobs for Armenia’s rural youth”  Behavioral Economics is a study about the effects of cognitive, psychological, emotional, cultural and social factors combined into a decision that is made by individuals and institutions.

The speaker, Armenak Antinyan, who has PhD in Behavioral Economics shared with the participants his knowledge and experience about the areas where this profession can be applied. He talked about the demand of Behavioral Economics specialists in Armenia.

The participants of the event, mostly young people learnt about the trends in the Armenian market and some very interesting facts on how Behavioral Economics works in general. The speaker presented several interesting examples on behavioral economics. To understand behavioral economics, you need to ask yourself a few questions – Why do you always buy more things than you actually need in supermarkets? Why when you see a low price on a product, you think that either this product is not good and you don’t buy it or it is a great deal, and this changes your individual behavior.

Behavioral economics provides an explanation for many things we do subconsciously in our daily life. In practice, much of behavioral economics consists of using psychological insights to influence behavior.

Participants of the event showed great interest towards the topic, they were actively involved in the discussions and freely posed their questions to the speaker. As one of the participants said, the talk made him start thinking about his behavior in this or that case, which he had never done before and greatly contributed to his knowledge in this field, which he will surely use in future .

To sum up, behavioral economy seeks to understand when and why people behave differently than economic model suggests.