Behavioral Economics: A History

This book presents a history of behavioral economics. The recurring theme is that behavioral economics reflects and contributes to a fundamental reorientation of the epistemological foundations upon which economics had been based since the days of Smith, Ricardo, and Mill. With behavioral economics, the discipline has shifted from grounding its theories in generalized characterizations to building theories from behavioral assumptions directly amenable to empirical validation and refutation. The book proceeds chronologically and takes the reader from von Neumann and Morgenstern's axioms of rational behavior, through the incorporation of rational decision theory in psychology in the 1950s-1970s, and to the creation and rise of behavioral economics in the 1980s and 1990s at the Sloan and Russell Sage Foundations.

Author: Floris Heukelom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 02/17/2014
Pages: 238
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.00lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9781107039346

Review Citation(s):
Choice 10/01/2014 pg. 314

About the Author
Heukelom, Floris: - Floris Heukelom is Assistant Professor of Economics, Radboud University Nijmegen. He specializes in the use of the experiment in twentieth-century economics and psychology. Among other journals, he has published in Science in Context, the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, History of Political Economy, and the Journal of Economic Methodology.