This book introduces readers to cognitive economics, a rapidly emerging interdisciplinary science built on economic, psychological, and data scientific foundations. Throughout the book, economist Andrew Caplin provides new approaches to help scholars collaborate and solve problems that can shape economic outcomes and bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and the real world.

Divided into two parts, the first section brings readers up to speed on economic concepts that underlie decision-making mistakes, such as utility functions, subjective beliefs, and costs of learning. It also explores real-world applications, including improvements in legal decision-making, online privacy protection, and optimizing human-AI collaboration. The book also discusses the future impact of AI on the workforce and emphasizes the need for decision-making skills and financial literacy in navigating this evolving landscape. In the second section of the book, Caplin addresses the barriers to progress within social sciences, advocating for interdisciplinary cooperation and innovative measurement techniques to advance the field.

The book invites readers to contribute to the development of cognitive economics. Whether you are a socially-conscious and hard-working citizen, business leader, scholar, or policymaker, this book will help you understand why cognitive economics matters to you and how you can contribute to its takeoff.

This book is available open access, which means it is freely available online.

The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics: A Handbook is the first book in a new series by Andrew Caplin and Andrew Schotter. There is currently no guide available on the rapidly changing methodological frontiers of the field of economics. Economists have been introducing new theories and new sources of data at a remarkable rate in recent years, and there are widely divergent views both on how productive these expansions have been in the past, and how best to make progress in the future. The speed of these changes has left economists ill at ease, and has created a backlash against new methods. The series will debate these critical issues, allowing proponents of a particular research method to present proposals in a safe yet critical context, with alternatives being clarified. This first volume, written by some of the most prominent researchers in the discipline, reflects the challenges that are opened by new research opportunities. The goal of the current volume and the series it presages, is to formally open a dialog on methodology. The editors' conviction is that such a debate will rebound to the benefit of social science in general, and economics in particular. The issues under discussion strike to the very heart of the social scientific enterprise. This work is of tremendous importance to all who are interested in the contributions that academic research can make not only to our scientific understanding, but also to matters of policy.

Although the United States has developed highly sophisticated markets for funding corporate investment projects, markets for financing home ownership are comparatively rudimentary. When a corporation wishes to fund a project, it can choose any mix of debt and equity financing. In contrast, to buy a home, a household must take on debt in the form of a mortgage. The authors of this book propose the development of new markets, called Partnership Markets, that would allow households to use equity finance to buy their homes. With these new markets, a household would be able to finance housing not only with a mortgage, but also with an institutional investor who would provide part of the equity capital for the house in exchange for a share of the ultimate selling price.

The new markets would offer many benefits to both homeowners and the broader financial community. In the current market, many Americans are forced to rent housing because they cannot afford to buy. Those who do buy are burdened with high debt payments. They also have the vast majority of their wealth tied up in their home and are exposed to the high risk levels of such an undiversified portfolio. With Partnership Markets, households would be able to buy homes with much smaller mortgages, thereby greatly reducing their expenses. They would also be able to diversify their assets and create less risky portfolios. For the broader financial community, Partnership Markets would provide an opportunity to diversify into the residential real estate market.

To give the reader a rounded view of their proposal, the authors explain the economic theory of the housing market and the housing finance market, as well as key aspects of the institutional structure and performance records of the current market. They discuss the wider ramifications of their proposal, including changes in the form and structure of the secondary market, the government's role in the housing market, the composition of assets held by institutions, and the general level of risk for individuals.