Dražen Prelec Digital Equipment Corp. LGO Professor of Management Science Personal page: |
Education: A.B. in Applied Mathematics at Harvard College; Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology at Harvard University.
Research interests: Psychology, behavioral economics and neuroscience; Decision making: rules, policies, principles, self-control, self-inference; Self-signalling, self-deception; Expert judgment: design of group scoring rules for training experts and eliciting their judgments; Time preference; Mental accounting, savings and debt attitudes, credit cards; Addictive overconsumption; Risk: probability weighing, psychophysics of small probabilities.
Present positions: Team, the MIT Virtual Customer Initiative (http://mitsloan.mit.edu/vc/t-main.php) ● Digital Marketing Strategy Group, the MIT Center for Digital Business (http://digital.mit.edu/research/Marketing.html) ● Faculty, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (http://cci.mit.edu/) ● Advisory Board, Micronotes (http://www.micronotes.com/advisors/)
Awards and acknowledgments: Leon Levy Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton ● Fellow, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2005 (http://mitsloan.mit.edu/newsroom/2005-prelec.php) ● Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, 1997-1998 ● Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows, 1982-1985.
Web resources on Professor Prelec: Readings packet: The information pump (http://mitsloan.mit.edu/vc/IPPacket.pdf; http://www.dur.ac.uk/p.c.matthews/drazen.pdf) ● Lecture: Emerging perspectives in decision making (with G. Huber, J. Lynch, T. Ho), AMA Doctoral Consortium, 2003 (slides: http://www.csom.umn.edu/Assets/11952.pdf) ● MIT OpenCourseWare, 2002: Listening to the customer ( http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-821Listening-to-the-CustomerFall2002/CourseHome/index.htm); Strategic marketing measurement ( http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Sloan-School-of-Management/15-822Strategic-Marketing-MeasurementFall2002/CourseHome/index.htm) ● Prelec discusses consumer confidence at Pbs Online Newshour, 2001 ( http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/economy/jan-june01/confidence_4-30.html) ● Spectrum MIT, 1999, The psychology of spending (http://spectrum.mit.edu/issue/1999-winter/the-psychology-of-spending/) ● Videolectures: Prelec’s Lecture: Neuroeconomics (video: http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/598)
SOME PUBLICATIONS AVAILABLE ON THE WEB
(2010) Danica Mijovic-Prelec, Drazen Prelec. Self-deception as self-signalling: A model and experimental evidence. Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society, 365, 227-240 (http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/365/1538/227.full.pdf)
(2009) Yonatan Loewenstein, Dražen Prelec, H. Sebastian Seung. Operant matching as a Nash equilibrium of an intertemporal game. Neural Computation, Vol. 21, No. 10 (October), 2755-2773 (http://2009.neurocomp.fr/doc/loewenstein2009.pdf)
(2008) Ariely, D., Kamenica, E., and D. Prelec. Man’s search for meaning: The case of Legos. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/emir.kamenica/documents/meaning.pdf)
(2008) Brian Knutson, G. Elliott Wimmer, Scott Rick, Nick G. Hollon, Dražen Prelec, George Loewenstein. Neural antecedents of the endowment effect. Neuron, 58(5) pp. 814 – 822 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6WSS-4SR6DTC-K-2&_cdi=7054&_user=10&_pii=S0896627308004534&_coverDate=06%2F12%2F2008&_sk=%23TOC%237054%232008%23999419994%23692006%23FLA%23display%23Volume_58,_Issue_5,_Pages_651-822
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(2007) Knutson, B., Rick, S., Wimmer, E., Prelec, D., Loewenstein, G., Neural predictors of purchases, Neuron, Vol. 53, 147-156 (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=MImg&_imagekey=B6WSS-4MR8D3D-H-2&_cdi=7054&_user=10&_pii=S0896627306009044&_coverDate=01%2F04%2F2007&_sk=%23TOC%237054%232007%23999469998%23640689%23FLA%23display%23Volume_53,_Issue_1,_Pages_1-156
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(2007) Ebert, J. and D. Prelec. The fragility of time: Time-insensitivity and valuation of the near and far future. Management Science, 2007, 53, 1423-1438 (http://carlsonschool.umn.edu/assets/99634.pdf)
(2005) Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., and Prelec, D., Neuroeconomics: How neuroscience can inform economics. Journal of Economic Literature, 43, 5-60 (http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/JELfinal.pdf)
(2005) Amir, O., Ariely, D.,Cooke, A., Dunning, D., Epley, N., Gneezy, U., Koszegi, B., Lichtenstein, D., Mazar, N., Mullainathan, S., Prelec, D., Shafir, E., Silva, J., Psychology, behavioral economics, and public policy, Marketing Letters, 16(3-4), 443-454 (http://www.predictablyirrational.com/pdfs/ML_Policy.pdf)
(2004) Camerer, C.F., Loewenstein, G., Prelec, D., Neuroeconomics: Why economics needs brains. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 106, 555-579 (http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/scanecon.pdf)
(2004) Prelec, D., Decreasing impatience: A criterion for non-stationary time preference and hyperbolic discounting. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 106, 511-532 (http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/14/sp08/14.137/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/readings/prelecdi/prelecdi.pdf)
(2004) Prelec, D., A Bayesian truth serum for subjective data. Science, 306, 462-466 (http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/14/sp08/14.137/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/readings/bayesiantruthserum/
bayesiantruthserum.pdf)
(2003) Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., and Prelec, D., Coherent arbitrariness: Stable demand curves without stable preferences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118, 73-106 (http://pages.towson.edu/jpomy/behavioralecon/anchor1.pdf)
(2001) Prelec, D., and Simester, D., Always leave home without it: A further investigation of the credit-card effect on willingness to pay. Marketing Letters, 12:1, 5-12 (http://web.mit.edu/simester/Public/Papers/Alwaysleavehome.pdf)
(1998) Prelec, D. and Loewenstein, G., The Red and the Black: Mental accounting of savings and debt. Marketing Science, 17, 4-28 (http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/14/sp08/14.137/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/readings/prelecredandblack/prelecredandblack.pdf)
(1997) Prelec, D., and Loewenstein, G., Beyond time discounting. Marketing Letters, 8, 97-108 (http://sds.hss.cmu.edu/media/pdfs/loewenstein/BeyondDiscounting.pdf)
(1993) Loewenstein, G. and Prelec, D., Preferences over sequences of outcomes. Psychological Review, 100, 91-108 (http://sds.hss.cmu.edu/media/pdfs/loewenstein/PreferencesSeqOutcomes.pdf)
(1993) Herrnstein, R.J., Loewenstein, G., Prelec, D. and Vaughan, W. Jr., Utility maximization and melioration: Internalities in individual choice. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 6, 149-185 (http://sds.hss.cmu.edu/media/pdfs/loewenstein/UtilityMaxMelioration.pdf)
(1992) Loewenstein, G. and Prelec, D., Anomalies in intertemporal choice: Evidence and an interpretation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 107, 573-598 (http://www.nyu.edu/econ/user/bisina/loewensteinprelec.pdf)
(1991) Prelec, D., and Loewenstein, G., Decision making over time and under uncertainty: A common approach. Management Science, 770-786, 37 (http://sds.hss.cmu.edu/media/pdfs/loewenstein/DecMakOverTimeUncert.pdf)
(1991) Loewenstein, G. and Prelec, D., Negative time preference. American Economic Review:, 347-352, 81 (http://epserv.unila.ac.id/proses%20perkuliahan/RIA/ujian%20mikro/loewenstein-negative%20time%20preference-91.pdf)
(1984) Prelec, D., The assumptions underlying the generalized matching law. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 41, 101-107 ( http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1347959&blobtype=pdf)
Working papers and drafts:
(2008) Rebecca Weiss, Drazen Prelec. An interactive tool to optimally aggregate crowd wisdom (Working paper: http://www.princeton.edu/~decconf/FinalPapers/WeissPaper.pdf)
(2007) Yonathan Loewenstein, Drazen Prelec, H. Sebastian Seung. A “matchimizing” theory of consumption (http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/docs/icb.topic67047.files/3_06_07_Prelec.pdf)
(2006) Drazen Prelec, H. Sebastian Seung. An algorithm that finds truth even if most people are wrong (http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/14/sp08/14.137/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/readings/prelecseungdistributionshort/
prelecseungdistributionshort.pdf)
(2005) Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., and Prelec, D., Tom Sawyer and the construction of value. Working paper 05-10, Federal Reserve bank of Boston (http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2005/wp0510.pdf)
(2001) Ronit Bodner, Drazen Prelec. Self-signaling and diagnostic utility in everyday decision making (http://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/14/sp08/14.137/courseMaterial/topics/topic2/readings/bodnerprelec/bodnerprelec.pdf)
Updated: February 4, 2010