by We welcome Naidu, Rodrik, and Zucman’s contribution and the debate it has inspired. We share much of their agenda for an economics “beyond neoliberalism” … Nonetheless, we believe that Naidu, Rodrik, and Zucman do not go far enough in their calls for reform. The vision they paint is still focused on the discipline of economics and anchored in the core ideas of neoclassical theory that dominated the field in the twentieth century … The behavioral economics critique of the rational actor model has become mainstream. Yet despite this, much economic modeling, including much policy modeling, continues to use rational choice assumptions. There remains a perception that rational choice is a “good enough approximation” and that there is no acceptable alternative model … But if
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We welcome Naidu, Rodrik, and Zucman’s contribution and the debate it has inspired. We share much of their agenda for an economics “beyond neoliberalism” …
Nonetheless, we believe that Naidu, Rodrik, and Zucman do not go far enough in their calls for reform. The vision they paint is still focused on the discipline of economics and anchored in the core ideas of neoclassical theory that dominated the field in the twentieth century …
The behavioral economics critique of the rational actor model has become mainstream. Yet despite this, much economic modeling, including much policy modeling, continues to use rational choice assumptions. There remains a perception that rational choice is a “good enough approximation” and that there is no acceptable alternative model … But if economists widened their view to include neuroscience, cognitive science, anthropology, social psychology, evolutionary biology, computer science, and philosophy, they would see that, over the last few decades, there has been a revolution in behavioral science that should have a major impact on economics.
Instead of asocial, transactional, self-regarding utility maximizers, real humans are intensely social, highly cooperative, and other-regarding creatures who make decisions inductively, heuristically, mimetically, and through group reasoning … Economics needs to embrace what other fields have learned about behavior, networks, institutions, culture, evolution, and non-equilibrium systems …
Our point is to encourage the field to go further, faster. Economics needs to embrace what other fields have learned about behavior, networks, institutions, culture, evolution, and non-equilibrium systems. To date the infrastructure of the economics profession—journals, funding bodies, hiring and tenure committees— has been largely closed to these ideas and approaches. If economics is to reform and move beyond neoliberalism, this needs to change.