Narrow Results

One of the missions of the cognitive process of animals, including humans, is to make reasonable judgments and decisions in the presence of uncertainty. The balance between exploration and exploitation investigated in the reinforcement-learning paradigm is one of the key factors in this process. Recently, following the pioneering work in behavioral economics, growing attention has been directed to human behaviors exhibiting deviations from the simple maximization of external reward. Here we study the dynamics of betting behavior in a simple game, where the probability of reward and the magnitude of reward are designed to give a "zero" expected net reward ("flat reward condition"). No matter how the subject behaves, there is on average no change in one's resources, and therefore every possible sequence of action has the same value. Even in such a situation, the subjects are found to behave not in a random manner, but in ways showing characteristic tendencies, reflecting the dynamics of brain's reward system. Our results suggest that brain's reward system is characterized by a rich and complex dynamics only loosely coupled with external reward structure.

In this paper we present a new neuroeconomics model for decision-making applied to the Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The model is based on the hypothesis that decision-making is dependent on the evaluation of expected rewards and risks assessed simultaneously in two decision spaces: the personal (PDS) and the interpersonal emotional spaces (IDS). Motivation to act is triggered by necessities identified in PDS or IDS. The adequacy of an action in fulfilling a given necessity is assumed to be dependent on the expected reward and risk evaluated in the decision spaces. Conflict generated by expected reward and risk influences the easiness (cognitive effort) and the future perspective of the decision-making. Finally, the willingness (not) to act is proposed to be a function of the expected reward (or risk), adequacy, easiness and future perspective. The two most frequent clinical forms are ADHD hyperactive(AD/HDhyp) and ADHD inattentive(AD/HDdin). AD/HDhyp behavior is hypothesized to be a consequence of experiencing high rewarding expectancies for short periods of time, low risk evaluation, and short future perspective for decision-making. AD/HDin is hypothesized to be a consequence of experiencing high rewarding expectancies for long periods of time, low risk evaluation, and long future perspective for decision-making.

This article explores some recent macroeconomic and microeconomic approaches to financial digitalization and the relationship between banks, FinTech and BigTech. It also deals with new approaches to identify the adoption and implications of financial digitalization by consumers. We show competition between traditional banks and tech companies is mostly driven by their relative ability to manage information sharing. Regulation is still considering ways of providing a level playing field while industry participants are reacting with a mixture of strategies, many of them based on cooperation. The paper also shows there are different ways in which customers access financial digital channels and new approaches from matching learning and brain studies to identify behavioral patterns in financial digitalization decisions.