Rationality in Economics: Alternative Perspectives PDF Download

Author: Ken Dennis
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401148627
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
Ideas linked to rational choice theory started to appear frequently in the economics literature in the 1960s and 1970s, but the attention given to rationality widened to include commentators presenting far-reaching appraisals and critiques. The literature grew to a steady flow and spanned diverse areas of thought including socialist and `rational-choice Marxist' assessments, and other approaches including institutional, sociological, psychological, ethical, choice-theoretical, strategic, and game-theoretical treatments of rationality. This diversity of literature led to the creation of this volume. What does rationality mean? Was there some common core of meaning that held all of these seemingly disparate developments together, or were there discernable schools of thought with peculiarities that set them clearly apart from one another? The essays in this volume illustrate that diversity, and despite the variety of approaches there remains a common core of meaning that accommodates not so much a radically different set of concepts of rationality as a highly variegated array of methods and approaches to this subject. Contributors address topics of their choice on the concept of rationality in economics, and the selection of these contributors is meant to represent a variety of backgrounds and approaches.

Author: Emma Coleman Jordan
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 580

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Book Description
George Akerlof, 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics argues that: ?Neoclassical theory suggests that poverty is the reflection of low initial endowments of human and nonhuman capital. The theory cannot account for persistent and extreme poverty coupled with high incidence of drug and alcohol abuse, out-of-wedlock births, single-headed households, high welfare dependency, and crime." This book is designed to provide materials for faculty and students who want to explore the basic intellectual history of modern economics and its turn away from rigid rationality assumptions by including material that would be useful in courses and seminars taught in economics departments at all levels, law school courses and seminars. It looks beyond neoclassical theory to provide the following alternatives: An introduction to the major challenges to the neoclassical model from scholars who share a faith in market ordering with overviews of the perspectives of behavioral economics, informational economics, institutional economics, and social norms. An introduction to the major criticisms of neoclassical economics from scholars who reject the model of the market for distributing the basic necessities of life with overviews of the perspectives of humanism; feminist critiques of market theory; racial critiques of market theory; empirical evidence of persistent racial discrimination in major markets; and market socialism.

Author: Bill J Gerrard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134915292
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
The concept of rationality is the heart of modern economics. Neo-classical theory seems unable to proceed without assuming a rational agent seeking to find the optimal means to a well defined end. Yet many find this uncritical treatment of rationality problematic. It takes little account of culture history or creativity and consequently many economists find this insistence on rationality of little use when trying to explain a wide range of economic phenomena. Increasingly these include a large number of game theorists and others involved in mainstream theory as well as those typically opposed to neo-classicism. The Economics of Rationality contains a number of critical perspectives on the treatment of rationality in economics.

Author: Mary Zey
Publisher: SAGE Publications, Incorporated
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
Prevailing, highly conservative rational choice theories are challenged in this illuminating volume. Mary Zey and other outstanding contributors expand our understanding of decision making theory by presenting evidence that points to the wide range and complexity of human decision making. Labelled as deviations from formal rationality, other models of decision making (habit, emotion, moral and ethical values) are shown to be alternative, not deviant, motives behind decision making. Written at an accessible level, this volume examines criticisms of the rational choice models from a wide range of perspectives. The following chapters then concentrate on micro- and macro- alternatives to rational choice models, including a bala

Author: Jennifer A. Baker
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019870139X
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A volume by leading economists and philosophers that explores the contributions that virtue ethics can make to economics. Provides historical and modern insights in both economics and philosophy and offers suggestions for incorporating the ethics of virtue into economics to make it more applicable to moral dilemmas in the world outside the models.

Author: K. L. Gupta
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 1461550955
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 285

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Book Description
Foreign aid has been an area of active scholarly investigation since the end of the Second World War, but particularly since the early 1950s when a large number of the erstwhile colonies became independent. Few areas of public policy involving the developed and developing countries have aroused more passion and ideological debate than foreign aid. In spite of the massive amount of research in the field, there is still not enough work in two areas: the first involves the mechanisms through which aid influences the economies of the donor and the recipient countries; and the second, country-specific assessments of the effectiveness of foreign aid. Foreign Aid: New Perspectives is aimed at making a contribution in these two areas. The contents of this volume are divided into four parts. Part I deals with some theoretical aspects of foreign aid, while the second part analyzes some general policy aspects. Part III turns to the donor experience and includes one paper on the Danish experience. The last part considers the recipient experience and consists of five case studies.

Author: Graham Mallard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317653858
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 141

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Book Description
Economics Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon developed the concept of bounded rationality in the 1950s. This asserts that the cognitive abilities of human decision-makers are not always sufficient to find optimal solutions to complex real-life problems, leading decision-makers to find satisfactory, sub-optimal outcomes. This was a foundational component of the development of Behavioural Economics but in recent years the two fields have diverged, each with its own literature, its own approach and its own proponents. Behavioural Economics explores the areas of commonality between Economics and Psychology, in terms of its focus and its approach, whereas the bounded rationality literature largely analyses the implications of sub-optimal decision‐making through the mathematically sophisticated methodology of mainstream Economics. This book examines the nature and consequences of this divergence and questions whether this is a case of beneficial specialisation or whether it is unhelpful, potentially stunting the development of some aspects of Economics. It has been suggested that the major deficiency of Behavioural Economics is that it has failed to produce a single, widely applicable alternative to constrained optimisation. This book evaluates the extent to which this is the true and, if it is, the extent to which it is a product of the divergence between the two literatures. It also seeks to identify commonalities between the two subjects and suggests avenues of research in Economics that would benefit from a re-fusion of these two fields.

Author: Alan Kirman
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136941673
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 366

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Book Description
The economic crisis is also a crisis for economic theory. Most analyses of the evolution of the crisis invoke three themes, contagion, networks and trust, yet none of these play a major role in standard macroeconomic models. What is needed is a theory in which these aspects are central. The direct interaction between individuals, firms and banks does not simply produce imperfections in the functioning of the economy but is the very basis of the functioning of a modern economy. This book suggests a way of analysing the economy which takes this point of view. The economy should be considered as a complex adaptive system in which the agents constantly react to, influence and are influenced by, the other individuals in the economy. In such systems which are familiar from statistical physics and biology for example, the behaviour of the aggregate cannot be deduced from the behaviour of the average, or "representative" individual. Just as the organised activity of an ants’ nest cannot be understood from the behaviour of a "representative ant" so macroeconomic phenomena should not be assimilated to those associated with the "representative agent". This book provides examples where this can clearly be seen. The examples range from Schelling’s model of segregation, to contributions to public goods, the evolution of buyer seller relations in fish markets, to financial models based on the foraging behaviour of ants. The message of the book is that coordination rather than efficiency is the central problem in economics. How do the myriads of individual choices and decisions come to be coordinated? How does the economy or a market, "self organise" and how does this sometimes result in major upheavals, or to use the phrase from physics, "phase transitions"? The sort of system described in this book is not in equilibrium in the standard sense, it is constantly changing and moving from state to state and its very structure is always being modified. The economy is not a ship sailing on a well-defined trajectory which occasionally gets knocked off course. It is more like the slime described in the book "emergence", constantly reorganising itself so as to slide collectively in directions which are neither understood nor necessarily desired by its components.

Author: Frederic S. Lee
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136215662
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Post-Keynesian and heterodox economics challenge the mainstream economics theories that dominate the teaching at universities and government economic policies. And it was these latter theories that helped to cause the great depression the United States and the rest of the world is in. However, most economists and the top 1% do not want mainstream theories challenged—for to do so would mean questioning why and how the 1% got where they are. Therefore, numerous efforts have been and are being made to discredit if not suppress Post-Keynesian and heterodox economics. These efforts have had some success; this book is a response to them. This book makes it clear that Post Keynesian/heterodox economics is, in spite of internal problems, a viable and important approach to economics and that it should resist the attempts of the critics to bury it. The reader will also find arguments that directly engage the critics and suggest that their views/criticisms are vacuous and wrong. As such, this will appeal to all who are interested in economic theory, economic history and who believe in challenging the orthodoxy.

Author: Peter Róna
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030526739
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.