The Beginnings of Behavioral Economics: Katona, Simon, and Leibenstein's X-Efficiency Theory explores the mid-20th century roots of behavioral economics, placing the origin of this now-dominant approach to economic theory many years before the groundbreaking 1979 work on prospect theory by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. It discusses the work of Harvey Leibenstein, Herbert Simon, George Katona, and Frederick Hayek, reintroducing their contributions as founding pillars of the behavioral approach. It concentrates on the work of Leibenstein, reviewing his nuanced introduction of X-efficiency theory. Building from these foundations, the work explores the body of empirical research on market power and firm behavior – XE relationship. This book is a tremendous resource for graduate students and early career researchers in behavioral economics, experimental economics, organizational economics, social and organizational psychology, labor market economics and public policy.

"Explores the history of the field of behavioral economics, focusing on the relationship between the first and subsequent generations of behavioral economists. Explores studies on X-efficiency among financial institutions in the United States and Asia from circa 1990 to 2017." --Journal of Economic Literature

Roger Frantz is Professor of Economics, San Diego State University. Roger Frantz has been a faculty member in the department of Economics at SDSU since 1978, attaining the rank of Full Professor in 1985. His fields of research are the history of economic thought, and behavioral economics. He has published in many Journals including Journal of Economic Psychology, Journal of Behavioral Economics, Journal of Socio-Economics, and many others. He is the Founding editor of the Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy. He has authored and edited many books.