Rationality in Economics: Alternative Perspectives

✍ Scribed by Ken Dennis (auth.), Ken Dennis (eds.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 152
• Series: Recent Economic Thought Series 62
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-vii
Introduction....Pages 1-4
Rationalisation in Economics: Theory, Methodology and Action....Pages 5-15
Rationality—A Global Concept....Pages 17-32
The Logic of Rationality: Modal and Defeasible....Pages 33-53
Rule-Following, Expertise, and Rationality: A New Behavioral Economics?....Pages 55-78
Rationality: A Journey Through the Semantic Bog....Pages 79-109
Rationales for Rationality....Pages 111-122
Sunk Costs, Water over the Dam, and Other Liquid Parables....Pages 123-136
The Need for Stimulating Action....Pages 137-146
Back Matter....Pages 147-149

✦ Subjects

Methodology and the History of Economic Thought; Political Philosophy