Overview
- The papers collected in this volume show that economic agents, individual or aggregate, do not conform to standard economic models How a different framework - complexity theory - could help to explain and understand the choice and decision process of economic agent A descriptive approach that springing from the complexity theory tries to give a scientific basis to the way in which individuals really choose
- Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras
Part of the book series: New Economic Windows (NEW)
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About this book
In economics agents are assumed to choose on the basis of rational calculations aimed at the maximization of their pleasure or profit. Formally, agents are said to manifest transitive and consistent preferences in attempting to maximize their utility in the presence of several constraints. They operate according to the choice imperative: given a set of alternatives, choose the best. This imperative works well in a static and simplistic framework, but it may fail or vary when 'the best' is changing continuously. This approach has been questioned by a descriptive approach that springing from the complexity theory tries to give a scientific basis to the way in which individuals really choose, showing that those models of human nature is routinely falsified by experiments since people are neither selfish nor rational. Thus inductive rules of thumb are usually implemented in order to make decisions in the presence of incomplete and heterogeneous information sets.
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Keywords
Table of contents (14 papers)
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Front Matter
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Techniques and Tools
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Front Matter
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Modeling from Physics
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Front Matter
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Editors and Affiliations
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Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Decision Theory and Choices: a Complexity Approach
Editors: Marisa Faggini, Concetto Paolo Vinci
Series Title: New Economic Windows
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-1778-8
Publisher: Springer Milano
eBook Packages: Mathematics and Statistics, Mathematics and Statistics (R0)
Copyright Information: Springer-Verlag Milan 2010
Hardcover ISBN: 978-88-470-1777-1Published: 11 August 2010
Softcover ISBN: 978-88-470-5817-0Published: 23 August 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-88-470-1778-8Published: 28 December 2010
Series ISSN: 2039-411X
Series E-ISSN: 2039-4128
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIV, 251
Topics: Game Theory, Economics, Social and Behav. Sciences, Applications of Graph Theory and Complex Networks, Political Economy/Economic Systems