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041 _afre
042 _adc
100 1 0 _aFoka-Kavalieraki, Yulie
_eauthor
700 1 0 _a N. Hatzis, Aristides
_eauthor
245 0 0 _aRational after All: Toward an Improved Theory of Rationality in Economics
260 _c2011.
500 _a26
520 _aIn this paper we revisit 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 mid-1970s to the early 1990s. We will discuss its epistemological assumptions and predictions and also the most important counter-arguments. We will emphasize the critique based on behavioral economics and will try to see if humans’ supposed cognitive constraints lead to a failure of rationality or if they constitute rational responses to the scarcity of information, time, and energy. In our discussion, we will use findings from experimental economics and the sciences of the brain, especially evolutionary psychology and neuroeconomics. Our intention is to present an improved theory of rational choice that, on the basis of the above discussion, will be more descriptively accurate without losing its predicting power. We will conclude by trying to answer the most important related policy question: when rationality seems to fail, does this necessarily imply that agents should be paternalistically protected from themselves? We will briefly defend the thesis that, in the long-run, it is much better for society at large if individual decision makers are left alone to develop rational responses to their cognitive constraints.
690 _acognition
690 _apaternalism
690 _arational choice theory
690 _arationality
690 _aevolutionary psychology
690 _abehavioral economics
786 0 _nRevue de philosophie économique / Review of Economic Philosophy | 12 | 1 | 2011-06-01 | p. 3-51 | 1376-0971
856 4 1 _uhttps://shs.cairn.info/journal-revue-de-philosophie-economique-2011-1-page-3?lang=en
999 _c223279
_d223279