Many experimental studies report that economics students tend to act more selfishly than students of other disciplines, a finding that received widespread public and professional attention. Two main explanations that the existing literature offers for the differences found in the behavior...

The cornerstone of mainstream economic theory is the premise of rationality. Humans are assumed to be rational economic agents who, subject to the available information and limited resources, are able to select, among a set of alternatives, the best means to maximize their ends and their...

This paper conducts a systematic comparison of behavioral economics’s challenges to the standard accounts of economic behaviors within three dimensions: under risk, over time and regarding other people. A new perspective on two underlying methodological issues, i.e., interdisciplinarity and...

In this paper we critically review the literature on rational choice theory (RCT) and the critical approaches to it. We will present a concise description of the theory as defended by Gary Becker, Richard Posner and James Coleman (as well as others) at the University of Chicago from the...

Both behavioral and neoclassical economists maintain a concept of strict rationality that is exceptionally narrow. Neoclassicists use it as a tool both to explain what agents actually do and as a prescriptive framework. Behavioralists do not believe it adequately explains actual behavior but...

This paper produces an edited version of an interview conducted by Professor Eric Beinhocker, Executive Director, INET Oxford, with Professor Sanjit Dhami of the University of Leicester, author of the Foundations of Behavioral Economic Analysis (Dhami 2016), on 9th May 2019 at the University of...

Extensive field and experimental evidence in a variety of environments show that behavior depends on a reference point. This paper provides an axiomatic characterization of this dependence. We proceed by imposing gradually more structure on both choice correspondences and preference relations,...

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Arbeiten von Jon Elster zum Problem lokaler Gerechtigkeit. Das Thema dieser Arbeiten sind Rationierungsentscheidungen. Es geht um die Allokation und Distribution knapper Zuteilungsgüter, also etwa um die Vergabe von Kindergarten- oder Studienplätzen, die Zuweisung...

The relation between emotion and rationality is assessed by reviewing empirical findings from multiple disciplines. Two types of emotional phenomena are examined incidental emotional states and integral emotional responses and three conceptions of rationality are considered logical, material,...

An agent wants to derive her belief over outcomes based on past observations collected in her database (memory). There is well establish evidence in the psychology and marketing literature that agents consistently fail (or choose not) to process all available information. An agent might be...