[PEN-L:2623] Re: Immutability of Subjects

[Rosser Jr, John Barkley]

Brad,
     I think that there is a sea change on this matter 
going on.  Quite aside from the work of such folks as 
Robert Frank, we have the excellent review article in the 
March, 1998 _Journal of Economic Literature_ by Matthew 
Rabin, recently identified by _The Economist_ as one of the 
new comers in economics, especially in conjunction with the 
penetration into economics of ideas from psychology (not 
sociology).  People like Kahneman and Tversky, not to 
mention that devotee of "behavioral finance" Richard Thaler 
and his _Winner's Curse_, have been plowing these fields 
for some time.
     Rabin's article reviews quite a few studies that have 
been done about how peoples' preferences can change and 
indeed how they are not very good at predicting those 
changes or taking them into account.  I agree that most 
economists continue to have a lot of trouble with all of 
this, and it is certainly a lot easier to just assume it 
all away as we usually do.  But that is getting to be less 
and less viable and there is a serious and new discussion 
going on out there.
Barkley Rosser
On Tue, 26 Jan 1999 07:33:32 -0800 Brad De Long 
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> >
> >> Which group of idiots assumes "subjects are immutable"?  Why does
> >> anybody pay any attention to them?
> >
> >Most economists do, with their neoclassical models and schemes of
> >rationality...
> >
> >-- Dennis
> 
> Economics is hard enough to do without thinking about the mutability of the
> subject too. (Gary Becker and company have been trying to think about the
> economics of addiction; and George Constantinides has been trying to think
> about investors' extraordinary aversion to stock market risk as a result of
> the fact that being rich *changes* you, so that you can no longer be happy
> if stock market losses forced you back into middle-class consumption
> patterns. I think both have been spinning their wheels.)
> 
> We are happy enough to hand over the mutability of the subject to the
> sociologists, and have been waiting for them to report back for a long
> time...
> 
> 
> Brad DeLong
> 
> 

-- 
Rosser Jr, John Barkley
[EMAIL PROTECTED]