Modeling Rational Agents
Author: Nicola Giocoli
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Published: 2003-01-01
Total Pages: 482
ISBN-13: 9781781956472
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This book explores the evolution, through the first half of the 20th century, of the key neoclassical concept of rationality. The analysis begins with the development of modern decision theory, covers the interwar debates over the role of perfect foresight and analyzes the first game-theoretic solution concepts of von Neumann and Nash. The author's proposition is that the notion of rationality suffered a profound transformation that reduced it to a formal property of consistency. Such a transformation paralleled that of neoclassical economics as a whole from a discipline dealing with real economic processes to one investigating issues of logical consistency between mathematical relationships."