Over a Decade of Neuroeconomics: What Have We Learned?

At its inception, neuroeconomics promised to revolutionize economics. That promise has not yet been realized, and neuroeconomics has seen limited penetration into mainstream economics. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to declare that neuroeconomics has failed. Quite to the contrary, the yearly rate of neuroeconomics papers has roughly doubled since 2005. While the number of direct applications to economics remains limited, due to the infancy of the field, we have learned an amazing amount about how the brain makes decisions. In this article, we review some of the major topics that have emerged in neuroeconomics and highlight findings that we believe will form the basis for future applications to economics. When possible, we focus on existing applications to economics and future directions for that research