Jean Tirole, who just won the Nobel Prize in Economics, is mostly known for his work applying game theory to Industrial Organization (the subfield of economics that studies how firms compete and set prices). But he wrote very broadly, including on some subjects likely of interest to people here. Several of his "fun" papers linked here provide explanations for how biased beliefs could be beneficial to those who hold them- for instance, that overconfidence in your own abilities could reduce akrasia.