Predictably Rational?: In Search of Defenses for Rational Behavior in Economics

by Richard B. McKenzie

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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.

  • ISBN13 9783642015854
  • Publish Date 23 November 2009
  • Publish Status Active
  • Publish Country DE
  • Publisher Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. KG
  • Imprint Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K
  • Edition 2010 ed.
  • Format Paperback
  • Pages 308
  • Language English