The Why Podcast: Why do people believe what they do?

Economists are interested in people’s beliefs because they drive their behaviour, which in turn impacts on the economy. In this episode of The Why Podcast, Jean-Pierre Benoît, Professor of Economics at London Business School, discusses research into how what people believe about themselves affects the choices they make. In the experiment he describes here, he investigated subjects’ self-confidence, exploring when they might bet on themselves vs leaving the outcome to fate by flipping a coin. Jean-Pierre Benoît is Professor of Economics at London Business School and Chair of the Economics Faculty. He is a winner of a Best Teacher Award on the Executive MBA programme. Read the full paper he discusses here: ‘Belief Elicitation when more than money matters: controlling for control’.