Neuroeconomics: An overview and applications to agricultural and food economics

This chapter provides an overview of the neuroeconomics field, with particular emphasis and applications to the agricultural and applied economics profession. First, I provide a brief overview of the brain. Next, I highlight the priority areas in the applied economics agenda, including developing, testing, and refining theory; the value of using neurophysiological data to enrich the underlying motivations of the choice process preference formation; evaluating treatment compliance and effort (internal validity); generalizability of behavior from the lab to the real world (external validity); and recent neuroeconomic advances in the prediction power of choice models. Next, I provide an overview of a wide range of available neuro-physiological tools varying in cost, obtrusiveness, and complexity. I highlight some basic, low-cost measures that can be incorporated using existing resources for most researchers. Throughout the chapter, I discuss opportunities for the neuroeconomics agenda to address relevant questions in the food and agriculture domain. Finally, I raise potential ethical concerns about the use of the neuroeconomics paradigm to induce changes that could harm individuals and result in suboptimal and costly behavior.