203 research outputs found
Mathematical Psychology
No full textThis article appeared originally in 1930, in Dutch, under the title “Mathematiese Psychologie” in Mens en Maatschappij. Translated and annotated by Conrad Heilmann, Stefan Wintein, Ruth Hinz, and Erwin Dekker, it is accompanied—in the present issue—by the article “No Envy: Jan Tinbergen on Fairness” written by Conrad Heilmann and Stefan Wintein
More Light on Measuring Utility. A Response to Herfeld, Heilmann, and Lenfant
No full textThis article belongs to a review symposium on my book “Measuring Utility. From the Marginal Revolution to Behavioral Economics”, Oxford University Press, 2018, and contains my response to the three reviewers, namely Catherine Herfeld, Conrad Heilmann, and Jean-Sébastien Lenfant
Policy Evaluation under Severe Uncertainty: A Cautious, Egalitarian Approach
No full textIn some severely uncertain situations, exemplified by climate change and novel pandemics, policymakers lack a reasoned basis for assigning probabilities to the possible outcomes of the policies they must choose between. I outline and defend an uncertainty averse, egalitarian approach to policy evaluation in these contexts. The upshot is a theory of distributive justice which offers especially strong reasons to guard against individual and collective misfortune
Values in Time Discounting
No full textControversies about time discounting loom large in decisions about climate change. Prominently, a particularly controversial debate about time discounting in climate change decision-making has been conducted within climate economics, between the authors of Stern et al. (Stern review on the economics of climate change, 2006) and their critics (most prominently Dasgupta in Comments on the Stern review’s economics of climate change, 2006; Tol in Energy Environ 17(6):977–981, 2006; Weitzman in J Econ Lit XLV:703–724, 2007; Nordhaus in J Econ Lit XLV:686–702, 2007). The article examines the role of values in this debate. Firstly, it is shown that time discounting is a case in which values are key because it is at heart an ethical problem. Secondly, it is argued that time discounting in climate economics is a case of economists making frequent and routine references to ethical values and indeed conduct ethical debates with each other. Thirdly, it is argued that there is evidence for deep and pervasive entanglement between facts and values in the prevalent methodologies for time discounting. Finally, it is argued that this means that economists have given up the ‘value-free ideal’ concerning time discounting, and discussed how the current methodology of time discounting in economics can be improved
Economic Agency and Subpersonal Agents
No full textA recurring theme in the history of economic thought is the idea that individuals are sometimes better viewed as collections of subpersonal agents, each with its own interests or goals. The modeling of persons as collections of agents has proved to be a useful heuristic for investigating aberrant choice-behaviors, such as weakness of will, procrastination, addiction, and other decision anomalies that indicate internal or motivational conflict. Yet, the concepts and methods used to study subpersonal agents give rise to a frenzied and sometimes confusing picture about who or what economic agents are, if not individual persons. In an attempt to clarify this picture, this chapter investigates how the concept of the economic agent has changed following the subpersonal turn in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics
Explanation in Economics
No full textDiscussions in the literature on economic methodology often do not explicitly concern explanation. The goal of this chapter is to show that, often implicitly, some key discussions are best understood as reflecting debates about explanation in economics. Disputes about, for instance, causal inference, idealizations, or microfoundations are debates about whether and how economics (should) explain. Examination of these issues through the prism of explanation sheds light on what is actually at stake and may help us progress on the route to solving them
Economic Agency and Subpersonal Agents
No full textA recurring theme in the history of economic thought is the idea that individuals are sometimes better viewed as collections of subpersonal agents, each with its own interests or goals. The modeling of persons as collections of agents has proved to be a useful heuristic for investigating aberrant choice-behaviors, such as weakness of will, procrastination, addiction, and other decision anomalies that indicate internal or motivational conflict. Yet, the concepts and methods used to study subpersonal agents give rise to a frenzied and sometimes confusing picture about who or what economic agents are, if not individual persons. In an attempt to clarify this picture, this chapter investigates how the concept of the economic agent has changed following the subpersonal turn in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics
Economic Agency and Subpersonal Agents
No full textA recurring theme in the history of economic thought is the idea that individuals are sometimes better viewed as collections of subpersonal agents, each with its own interests or goals. The modeling of persons as collections of agents has proved to be a useful heuristic for investigating aberrant choice-behaviors, such as weakness of will, procrastination, addiction, and other decision anomalies that indicate internal or motivational conflict. Yet, the concepts and methods used to study subpersonal agents give rise to a frenzied and sometimes confusing picture about who or what economic agents are, if not individual persons. In an attempt to clarify this picture, this chapter investigates how the concept of the economic agent has changed following the subpersonal turn in behavioral economics and neuroeconomics
A New Interpretation of the Representational Theory of Measurement
No full textOn the received view, the Representational Theory of Measurement reduces measurement to the numerical representation of empirical relations. This account of measurement has been widely criticised. In this paper, I provide a new interpretation of the Representational Theory of Measurement that sidesteps these debates. I propose to view the Representational Theory of Measurement as a library of theorems that investigate the numerical representability of qualitative relations. Such theorems are useful tools for concept formation which, in turn, is one crucial aspect of measurement for a broad range of cases in linguistics, rational choice, metaphysics, and the social sciences
- …
