Behavioral economics is popular because its a better model. It's clear that any model of human behavior and decision making will necessary be very complicated.

Behavioral economics is popular because its a better model. It's clear that any model of human behavior and decision making will necessary be very complicated. It doesn't make any sense to right at the start decide that the only factor that will be considered is financial expected value. Even though any model based on such an assumption will be severely flawed, this is the view of main stream economics, and this explains why behavioral economics is a better model.