I think this is bass-ackwards. In so far as economics is something worth doing, it's a branch of control engineering - most of the useful parts of economics are to do with the optimisation of production and distribution processes, or the large-scale behaviour of complicated recursive systems. "Explaining human behaviour" is exactly the sort of thing that economists ought to stay out of. So my view would be that if you find yourself looking down an MRI scanner into someone's brain to try and find out what they're thinking, this is a good sign that you're messing about in something that isn't economics, and you should go away and write something about unemployment or share prices or trade instead. Behavioural and neuro- economics are clever and inventive answers to questions that shouldn't have been asked. Don't get me started on "Freakonomics".
(I include by citation my periodic sermon how extraordinarily *little* of economics as a subject is dependent on any particular view about rationality or human behaviour, and indeed my specific point that the Soviet Academy managed to reproduce most of the important theorems in Samuelson's book by considering properties of linear programming systems). best dd > On Sep 5, 2008, at 9:03 AM, Jim Devine wrote: > > > I think if economists are trying to explain human behavior using MRIs, > > PET scans, etc., they should change their approach. Rather than > > starting with homo economicus, they should start with neuroeconomic > > results and then try to summarize its conclusions with a model. > _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
