me: > > FWIW, Leavitt doesn't do experiments. He's not a behavioral economist.
raghu writes: > Levitt does not do experiments himself but he likes to cite data from > behavioral experiments to illustrate his famous Rogue Economics > technique. all economists should cite experimental evidence. I'm glad that Leavitt does so. > For e.g., in a lecture at Princeton he referred to research > by John List on the "Dictator Game", and went on to argue how it is > entirely consistent with the self-interested individuals hypothesis. > > In this game, one subject (the dictator) is given $10.00, and is then > given a choice - to either give part of the $10.00 to another subject, > or to give nothing, or even to steal some or all of $10.00 from the > other. Levitt says that apparently altruistic behavior found in this > experiment is merely an artifact of the subjects trying to win the > approval of the experimenter. I didn't know that he's the one who made that argument. Behaviorists have responded to that. It'd be nice if there were an expert in the house... > Of course using such reasoning he can easily dismiss the entire body > of behavioral economics, which is exactly why that work will never > amount to more than clever stories. why do you say that? Ptolemaic astronomers thought up good stories (epicycles) to dismiss Copernican ideas. But eventually Copernicus won. > Behaviorists are to neo-classical > economics, what Zeno's paradoxes are mathematical Analysis. I don't get the analogy. -- Jim Devine / "The truth is at once less sinister and more dangerous." -- Naomi Klein.
