The debt to pleasure5/10/2023 Yet a large body of research from cognitive psychology shows that preferences are in fact rather fluid. To take one example, the “people” in economic models have fixed preferences, which are taken as given. Homo economicus, not his fallible counterpart, is the oddity. Rather, what economists consider anomalous is the norm. He wants economists to accept that evidence from other disciplines does not just explain those bits of behaviour that do not fit the standard models. In his latest paper* he outlines a “new science of pleasure”, in which he argues that economics should draw much more heavily on fields such as psychology, neuroscience and anthropology. The Nobel prizewinning economist at the University of California, Berkeley, wryly termed homo economicus “a rare species”. That this description is unlike any real person was Mr McFadden’s point. “SOVEREIGN in tastes, steely-eyed and point-on in perception of risk, and relentless in maximisation of happiness.” This was Daniel McFadden’s memorable summation, in 2006, of the idea of Everyman held by economists.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |