Recently there has been a small surge in the economics literature addressing the role of trust in the economy. Experiments have shown that trust is extremely important for understanding economic processes. Trust does not fit very well with the traditional concept of “homo economicus”: Rational behavior is not trusting. The building and confirmation of trust…
Month: August 2009
Limitations of behavioral economics
Over the past months during the current economic recession and financial crisis, there has developed a published opinion as if so-called behavioral economics could explain the crisis. Behavioral economics emanates from observations in economic and game theoretic experiments that human subjects do not behave rationally, but are clearly bounded in their reasoning about decisions. Subjects…