Rationality In Economics Alternative Perspectives

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.

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.

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.

This book is about bounded rationality and public policy. It is written from the p- spective of someone trained in public economics who has encountered the enormous literature on experiments in decision-making and wonders what implications it has for the normative aspects of public policy. Though there are a few new results or models, to a large degree the book is synthetic in tone, bringing together disparate literatures and seeking some accommodation between them. It has had a long genesis. It began with a draft of a few chapters in 2000, but has expanded in scope and size as the literature on behavioural economics has grown. At some point I realised that the geometric growth of behavioural - search and the arithmetic growth of my writing were inconsistent with an am- tion to be exhaustive. As such therefore I have concentrated on particular areas of behavioural economics and bounded rationality. The resulting book is laid out as follows: Chapter 1 provides an overview of the rest of the book, goes through some basic de?nitions and identi?es themes.

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

As a collection of alternative views on societies, methodologies, policies and assessment of the current elements of the society, Alternative Perspectives on a Good Society brings together different authors answering different questions all within the context of visions of a good society.

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: through emergent socio-economic institutions and cultural norms, people achieve ends that are unintended and poorly understood. In cultural changes, the role of constructivism, or reason, is to provide variation, and the role of ecological processes is to select the norms and institutions that serve the fitness needs of societies.