Drazen Prelec

Drazen Prelec is a Professor of Management Science and Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, with appointments in the Department of Economics and Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. His work bridges psychology, neuroscience, and economics to study decision-making mechanisms.

• Education: AB in Applied Mathematics (Harvard College), PhD in Experimental Psychology (Harvard University)

Prelec's research focuses on behavioral economics and neuroeconomics, particularly in areas like risky choice, time discounting, self-control, and consumer behavior. He develops normative decision theory while investigating its empirical limitations using behavioral and fMRI methods. Two major projects include:

• Self-Signaling: Examines non-causal motivation where individuals favor actions diagnostic of favorable outcomes over causal ones
• Bayesian Truth Serum: Creates scoring systems to reward honest judgments in domains without objective truth criteria

His recent publications span topics in crowd wisdom, temporal discounting, and neuroeconomic modeling, with applications to consumer neuroscience, political forecasting, and behavioral ethics.

• Guggenheim Fellowship
• Junior Fellow, Harvard Society of Fellows

Prelec contributes to understanding how credit card usage activates brain reward centers to increase spending, and explores honesty biases in social interactions. His work integrates computational models with empirical neuroscience to address foundational questions in decision theory.