Bounded Rationality and Politics

Bounded Rationality and Politics

Author: Jonathan Bendor

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010-06-02

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 0520945514

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In Bounded Rationality and Politics, Jonathan Bendor considers two schools of behavioral economics—the first guided by Tversky and Kahneman’s work on heuristics and biases, which focuses on the mistakes people make in judgment and choice; the second as described by Gerd Gigerenzer’s program on fast and frugal heuristics, which emphasizes the effectiveness of simple rules of thumb. Finding each of these radically incomplete, Bendor’s illuminating analysis proposes Herbert Simon’s pathbreaking work on bounded rationality as a way to reconcile the inconsistencies between the two camps. Bendor shows that Simon’s theory turns on the interplay between the cognitive constraints of decision makers and the complexity of their tasks.


Bounded Rationality and Politics

Bounded Rationality and Politics

Author: Jonathan B. Bendor

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 0520259467

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Bendor's Bounded Rationality and Politics provides an adept and illuminating critique of existing theories while also introducing new models and concepts that are sure to remain part of the conversation for generations to come. This book will reinvigorate the field of political science."--Daniel P. Carpenter, Harvard University "Bendor's scholarship is top drawer. Excellent. These essays are not only intellectually deep, but also engaging and powerful."--Scott Page, University of Michigan


Bounded Rationality

Bounded Rationality

Author: Sanjit Dhami

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-07-12

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 0262369656

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Two leaders in the field explore the foundations of bounded rationality and its effects on choices by individuals, firms, and the government. Bounded rationality recognizes that human behavior departs from the perfect rationality assumed by neoclassical economics. In this book, Sanjit Dhami and Cass R. Sunstein explore the foundations of bounded rationality and consider the implications of this approach for public policy and law, in particular for questions about choice, welfare, and freedom. The authors, both recognized as experts in the field, cover a wide range of empirical findings and assess theoretical work that attempts to explain those findings. Their presentation is comprehensive, coherent, and lucid, with even the most technical material explained accessibly. They not only offer observations and commentary on the existing literature but also explore new insights, ideas, and connections. After examining the traditional neoclassical framework, which they refer to as the Bayesian rationality approach (BRA), and its empirical issues, Dhami and Sunstein offer a detailed account of bounded rationality and how it can be incorporated into the social and behavioral sciences. They also discuss a set of models of heuristics-based choice and the philosophical foundations of behavioral economics. Finally, they examine libertarian paternalism and its strategies of “nudges.”


Politics and the Architecture of Choice

Politics and the Architecture of Choice

Author: Bryan D. Jones

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-05

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 9780226406374

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Politics and the Architecture of Choice draws on work in political science, economics, cognitive science, and psychology to offer an innovative theory of how people and organizations adapt to change and why these adaptations don't always work. Our decision-making capabilities, Jones argues, are both rational and adaptive. But because our rationality is bounded and our adaptability limited, our actions are not based simply on objective information from our environments. Instead, we overemphasize some factors and neglect others, and our inherited limitations—such as short-term memory capacity—all act to affect our judgment. Jones shows how we compensate for and replicate these limitations in groups by linking the behavioral foundations of human nature to the operation of large-scale organizations in modern society. Situating his argument within the current debate over the rational choice model of human behavior, Jones argues that we should begin with rationality as a standard and then study the uniquely human ways in which we deviate from it.


Politics and the Architecture of Choice

Politics and the Architecture of Choice

Author: Bryan D. Jones

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-05

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9780226406381

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Politics and the Architecture of Choice draws on work in political science, economics, cognitive science, and psychology to offer an innovative theory of how people and organizations adapt to change and why these adaptations don't always work. Our decision-making capabilities, Jones argues, are both rational and adaptive. But because our rationality is bounded and our adaptability limited, our actions are not based simply on objective information from our environments. Instead, we overemphasize some factors and neglect others, and our inherited limitations—such as short-term memory capacity—all act to affect our judgment. Jones shows how we compensate for and replicate these limitations in groups by linking the behavioral foundations of human nature to the operation of large-scale organizations in modern society. Situating his argument within the current debate over the rational choice model of human behavior, Jones argues that we should begin with rationality as a standard and then study the uniquely human ways in which we deviate from it.


Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion

Bounded Rationality and Policy Diffusion

Author: Kurt Weyland

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-02-09

Total Pages: 313

ISBN-13: 1400828066

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Why do very different countries often emulate the same policy model? Two years after Ronald Reagan's income-tax simplification of 1986, Brazil adopted a similar reform even though it threatened to exacerbate income disparity and jeopardize state revenues. And Chile's pension privatization of the early 1980s has spread throughout Latin America and beyond even though many poor countries that have privatized their social security systems, including Bolivia and El Salvador, lack some of the preconditions necessary to do so successfully. In a major step beyond conventional rational-choice accounts of policy decision-making, this book demonstrates that bounded--not full--rationality drives the spread of innovations across countries. When seeking solutions to domestic problems, decision-makers often consider foreign models, sometimes promoted by development institutions like the World Bank. But, as Kurt Weyland argues, policymakers apply inferential shortcuts at the risk of distortions and biases. Through an in-depth analysis of pension and health reform in Bolivia, Brazil, Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Peru, Weyland demonstrates that decision-makers are captivated by neat, bold, cognitively available models. And rather than thoroughly assessing the costs and benefits of external models, they draw excessively firm conclusions from limited data and overextrapolate from spurts of success or failure. Indications of initial success can thus trigger an upsurge of policy diffusion.


Bounded Rationality

Bounded Rationality

Author: Gerd Gigerenzer

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2002-07-26

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9780262571647

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In a complex and uncertain world, humans and animals make decisions under the constraints of limited knowledge, resources, and time. Yet models of rational decision making in economics, cognitive science, biology, and other fields largely ignore these real constraints and instead assume agents with perfect information and unlimited time. About forty years ago, Herbert Simon challenged this view with his notion of "bounded rationality." Today, bounded rationality has become a fashionable term used for disparate views of reasoning. This book promotes bounded rationality as the key to understanding how real people make decisions. Using the concept of an "adaptive toolbox," a repertoire of fast and frugal rules for decision making under uncertainty, it attempts to impose more order and coherence on the idea of bounded rationality. The contributors view bounded rationality neither as optimization under constraints nor as the study of people's reasoning fallacies. The strategies in the adaptive toolbox dispense with optimization and, for the most part, with calculations of probabilities and utilities. The book extends the concept of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to emotions; it analyzes social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools as rational strategies; and it shows how smart heuristics can exploit the structure of environments.


Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality

Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality

Author: Riccardo Viale

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-02

Total Pages: 844

ISBN-13: 131733079X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Herbert Simon’s renowned theory of bounded rationality is principally interested in cognitive constraints and environmental factors and influences which prevent people from thinking or behaving according to formal rationality. Simon’s theory has been expanded in numerous directions and taken up by various disciplines with an interest in how humans think and behave. This includes philosophy, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, economics, political science, sociology, management, and organization studies. The Routledge Handbook of Bounded Rationality draws together an international team of leading experts to survey the recent literature and the latest developments in these related fields. The chapters feature entries on key behavioural phenomena, including reasoning, judgement, decision making, uncertainty, risk, heuristics and biases, and fast and frugal heuristics. The text also examines current ideas such as fast and slow thinking, nudge, ecological rationality, evolutionary psychology, embodied cognition, and neurophilosophy. Overall, the volume serves to provide the most complete state-of-the-art collection on bounded rationality available. This book is essential reading for students and scholars of economics, psychology, neurocognitive sciences, political sciences, and philosophy.


Models of Bounded Rationality

Models of Bounded Rationality

Author: Univ Of Chicago

Publisher: Mit Press

Published: 1997-07

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9780262519434

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Offering alternative models based on such concepts as satisficing(acceptance of viable choices that may not be the undiscoverableoptimum) and bounded rationality (the limited extent to which rationalcalculation can direct human behavior), Simon shows concretely whymore empirical research based on experiments and direct observation, rather than just statistical analysis of economic aggregates, isneeded.


The Social Construction of Rationality

The Social Construction of Rationality

Author: Onno Bouwmeester

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-03-16

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1317530764

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

There are many different forms of rationality. In current economic discourse the main focus is on instrumental rationality and optimizing, while organization scholars, behavioural economists and policy scientists focus more on bounded rationality and satisficing. The interplay with value rationality or expressive rationality is mainly discussed in philosophy and sociology, but never in an empirical way. This book shows that not one, but three different forms of rationality (subjective, social and instrumental) determine the final outcomes of strategic decisions executed by major organizations. Based on an argumentation analysis of six high-profile public debates, this book adds nuance to the concept of bounded rationality. The chapters show how it is socially constructed, and thus dependent on shared beliefs or knowledge, institutional context and personal interests. Three double case studies investigating the three rationalities illustrate how decision makers and stakeholders discuss the appropriateness of these rationalities for making decisions in different practice contexts. The first touches more on personal concerns, like wearing a niqab or looking at obscene art exposed in a public environment; the second investigates debates on improving the rights and position of specific minorities; and the third is based on the agreement on instrumental reasons for two kinds of investments, but the cost arguments are regarded less relevant when social norms or personal interests are violated. The Social Construction of Rationality is for those who study political economy, economic psychology and public policy, as well as economic theory and philosophy.