Humans have to perform many decisions every day, ranging from food to social or financial choices. Contemporary economics has contributed fundamentally to our understanding of decision making by analysing how costs and benefits connected to a particular choice are weighted and opportunity costs of decisions are identified.

Both from a rational choice as well as a behavioural economics perspective, theories have been put forward to explain and predict economic decision making and inform policies and institutions. Neuroeconomics makes use of multiple methods and provides the possibility to measure the neural correlates of reasoning underlying the decision process, thereby building the foundation for competitive model testing.