The Varieties of Economic Rationality: From Adam Smith to Contemporary Behavioural and Evolutionary Economics

Description

The concept of economic rationality is important for the historical evolution of Economics as a scientific discipline. The common idea about this concept -even between economists- is that it has a unique meaning which is universally accepted. This new volume argues that "economic rationality" is not not a universal concept with one single meaning, and that it in fact has different, if not conflicting, interpretations in the evolution of discourse on economics. In order to achieve this, the book traces the historical evolution of the concept of economic rationality from Adam Smith to the present, taking in thinkers from Mill to Friedman, and encompassing approaches from neoclassical to behavioural economics. The book charts this history in order to reveal important instances of conceptual transformation of the meaning of economic rationality. In doing so, it presents a uniquely detailed study of the historical change of the many faces of the homo oeconomicus. Dedication Contents Preface and acknowledgements Introduction 1 Adam Smith and the idea of morally constrained rationality 2 John Stuart Mill and the concept of socially embedded rationality 3 William Stanley Jevons and the concept of rationality as maximization 4 Vilfredo Pareto and the concept of instrumental rationality 5 Lionel Robbins and consistency of choices under scarcity 6 Neoclassical rationality under fire: theoretical, methodological and empirical critique in the late 1930s 7 Three conventionalist responses: Machlup, Samuelson and Friedman 8 Popper’s retreat and the “principle of rationality” 9 Probabilistic choice and strategic rationality 10 Herbert Simon and the concept of bounded rationality 11 Rationality in behavioural economics 12 The rationality of embedded individuals Conclusion: What is rational after all? References Index