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Author: Bill J Gerrard Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134915284 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 206
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: Bill J Gerrard Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1134915284 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 206
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: Richard H. Thaler Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation ISBN: 9780871548474 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 396
Book Description
Standard economics theory is built on the assumption that human beings act rationally in their own self interest. But if rationality is such a reliable factor, why do economic models so often fail to predict market behavior accurately? According to Richard Thaler, the shortcomings of the standard approach arise from its failure to take into account systematic mental biases that color all human judgments and decisions.
Author: Vernon L. Smith Publisher: ISBN: 9781107386440 Category : Constructivism (Philosophy) Languages : en Pages : 364
Book Description
The principal findings of experimental economics are that impersonal exchange in markets converges in repeated interaction to the equilibrium states implied by economic theory, under information conditions far weaker than specified in the theory. In personal, social, and economic exchange, as studied in two-person games, cooperation exceeds the prediction of traditional game theory. This book relates these two findings to field studies and applications and integrates them with the main themes of the Scottish Enlightenment and with the thoughts of F.A. Hayek.
Author: Maurice Godelier Publisher: Verso Books ISBN: 1781689857 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 414
Book Description
This book is the result of a research project begun by the author in 1958 with the aim of answering two questions: First, what is the rationality of the economic systems that appear and disappear throughout history-in other words, what is their hidden logic and the underlying necessity for them to exist, or to have existed? Second, what are the conditions for a rational understanding of these systems-in other words, for a fully developed comparative economic science? The field of investigation opened up by these two questions is vast, touching on the foundations of social reality and on how to understand them. The author, being a Marxist, sought the answers, as he writes, 'not in philosophy or by philosophical means, but in and through examining the knowledge accumulated by the sciences.' The stages of his journey from philosophy to economics and then to anthropology are indicated by the divisions of his book. Godelier rejects, at the outset, any attempt to tackle the question of rationality or irrationality of economic science and of economic realities from the angle of an a priori idea, a speculative definition of what is rational. Such an approach can yield only, he feels, an ideological result. Rather, he treats the appearance and disappearance of social and economic systems in history as being governed by a necessity 'wholly internal to the concrete structures of social life.
Author: Karen Schweers Cook Publisher: University of Chicago Press ISBN: 0226742415 Category : Political Science Languages : en Pages : 436
Book Description
Prevailing economic theory presumes that agents act rationally when they make decisions, striving to maximize the efficient use of their resources. Psychology has repeatedly challenged the rational choice paradigm with persuasive evidence that people do not always make the optimal choice. Yet the paradigm has proven so successful a predictor that its use continues to flourish, fueled by debate across the social sciences over why it works so well. Intended to introduce novices to rational choice theory, this accessible, interdisciplinary book collects writings by leading researchers. The Limits of Rationality illuminates the rational choice paradigm of social and political behavior itself, identifies its limitations, clarifies the nature of current controversies, and offers suggestions for improving current models. In the first section of the book, contributors consider the theoretical foundations of rational choice. Models of rational choice play an important role in providing a standard of human action and the bases for constitutional design, but do they also succeed as explanatory models of behavior? Do empirical failures of these explanatory models constitute a telling condemnation of rational choice theory or do they open new avenues of investigation and theorizing? Emphasizing analyses of norms and institutions, the second and third sections of the book investigate areas in which rational choice theory might be extended in order to provide better models. The contributors evaluate the adequacy of analyses based on neoclassical economics, the potential contributions of game theory and cognitive science, and the consequences for the basic framework when unequal bargaining power and hierarchy are introduced.
Author: Michel Zouboulakis Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1317817494 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 188
Book Description
The concept of economic rationality is important for the historical evolution of Economics as a scientific discipline. The common idea about this concept -even between economists- is that it has a unique meaning which is universally accepted. This new volume argues that "economic rationality" is not not a universal concept with one single meaning, and that it in fact has different, if not conflicting, interpretations in the evolution of discourse on economics. In order to achieve this, the book traces the historical evolution of the concept of economic rationality from Adam Smith to the present, taking in thinkers from Mill to Friedman, and encompassing approaches from neoclassical to behavioural economics. The book charts this history in order to reveal important instances of conceptual transformation of the meaning of economic rationality. In doing so, it presents a uniquely detailed study of the historical change of the many faces of the homo oeconomicus .
Author: Alan Kirman Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1136941673 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 366
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: Maurice Lagueux Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 1135150346 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
This book analyses the role of rationality in economics focusing on which conditions the rationality assumption makes valuable explanations possible and what kinds of explanation are then involved.
Author: Richard B. McKenzie Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media ISBN: 3642015867 Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 319
Book Description
Mainstream economists everywhere exhibit an "irrational passion for dispassionate rationality." Behavioral economists, and long-time critic of mainstream economics suggests that people in mainstrean economic models "can think like Albert Einstein, store as much memory as IBM’s Big Blue, and exercise the will power of Mahatma Gandhi," suggesting that such a view of real world modern homo sapiens is simply wrongheaded. Indeed, Thaler and other behavioral economists and psychology have documented a variety of ways in which real-world people fall far short of mainstream economists' idealized economic actor, perfectly rational homo economicus. Behavioral economist Daniel Ariely has concluded that real-world people not only exhibit an array of decision-making frailties and biases, they are "predictably irrational," a position now shared by so many behavioral economists, psychologists, sociologists, and evolutionary biologists that a defense of the core rationality premise of modedrn economics is demanded.
Author: Bill J Gerrard
Author: Bill J Gerrard
Author: Richard H. Thaler
Author: Vernon L. Smith
Author: Maurice Godelier
Author: Karen Schweers Cook
Author: Michel Zouboulakis
Author: Shaun Hargreaves Heap
Author: Alan Kirman
Author: Maurice Lagueux
Author: Richard B. McKenzie