经济学理性假设的发展及对经济研究的影响——从完全理性到有限理性

理性经济人的假设是经济学研究的基本假设.而理性假设也经历了由完全理性到有限理性的发展,与人们的现实生活更为贴近.完全理性是主流经济学的理论前提,而有限理性假设的发展是随着新制度经济学、演化经济学和行为经济学的发展而发展的.本文首先论证人的本性并非绝对利己,利他主义是合理并存在的,接着对理性这一概念进行界定,最后对理性假设的发展以及其对经济研究方法的转变进行综合分析.     

基于有限理性假设的行为经济学分析

经济学关于理性假设的争论正成为最近学术界研究的热点。本文提出由于不确定性的存在,个体在追求效用最大化行为的同时,必须考虑他人的选择,正是这种内生的根本不确定性才真正构成了有限理性的实质内容。最后,本文指出在证券市场上即使没有了外生的不确定性,投资者决策之间及其价格的互动也会产生内生的根本不确定性,这对理解股市的泡沫与崩溃有极为重要的意义。     

从完全理性到有限理性:西蒙决策理论的实践价值

以"有限理性"为基础的西蒙决策理论是管理决策理论发展的重大转折,其通过对古典决策理论中的"完全理性"假定的质疑,揭示了以完全理性为基础的最优决策理论的缺陷--缺乏现实可行性,进而提出了替代最优决策模式的更有效的决策理论--有限理性的决策理论.这一理论以决策者的有限理性为基础,以"满意"为决策准则,为决策者提供了更切合实际的决策模式,弥补了最优决策的缺陷,更具指导意义和实践价值.     

情绪介入经济决策研究的演变路径——从古典经济学到神经经济学

情绪曾是古典经济学研究经济决策的出发点.新古典经济学的理性决策模型却把情绪视为干扰因素而加以排除.行为经济学从有限理性、偏好逆转和认知偏差中"发现"了情绪对经济决策的重要影响.神经经济学则运用fRMI等脑成像技术揭示了情绪影响经济决策的脑神经机制.文章从经济学的发展过程探讨情绪影响经济决策的演变路径,试图运用不同分析视角形成情绪与决策关系的一般分析框架及其适用条件.最后探讨了情绪与决策关系研究的未来发展方向.     

神经经济学:经济决策研究的新视角

一、引言 长期以来,决策一直是经济学、心理学、神经科学等诸多学科领域的研究者所努力探索的主题.自19世纪开始,新古典主义经济学家在研究经济理论时都深思熟虑地将人的大脑看作一个黑箱,忽视大脑的细节以及心理对个体经济行为的影响,并在此基础上形成了理性选择模型 [1]c26.建立在此基础上的现代经典经济学理论不论是在理论体系上还是在对实际问题的解释上都取得了巨大的成功.     

从认知科学到经济学:情绪介入经济决策的内在机理研究

认知科学中情绪研究的兴起和发展改变了人们对情绪介入经济决策的传统认识。文章在梳理认知科学关于情绪介入决策的基础上,从权变的视角分析了情绪介入决策的权变因素,并阐述了认知科学对情绪介入经济决策研究的渗透和影响。文章认为认知科学对经济学的影响表现为:在研究视角上,可以从认知科学的信息加工视角理解情绪介入经济决策的内在机制;在研究层次上,经济决策的研究从行为层进入到认知心理层和脑神经层;在研究方法上,认知科学的行为实验和脑功能成像技术等方法被运用到经济决策的研究中;在研究模型上,经济学家发展了一些基于具体情绪的决策模型。文章在认知科学的基础上构建了经济学情绪—理性互动决策的概念模型。     

从经济心理学到行为金融学的百年回顾

行为金融学的发展经历了经济心理学、行为经济学和行为金融学三个阶段.该理论对传统金融学所不能解释的市场异象做出了合理解释,尽管它还没有形成一个完善的理论体系.我国对行为金融学的研究还处于引用和介绍阶段,不过,该理论在中国必然有很大的发展前景和现实意义.     

From Mill to Weber: the meaning of the concept of economic rationality

Weber recognized explicitly that his concept of ideal-type is directly borrowed from economic theory and as it is commonly admitted from the German-speaking ‘marginalist school’. Nevertheless, the construction of ideal-types reminds greatly the definition of economic rationality made by John Stuart Mill, who also built up a concept to explain, in individualistic terms, the real world in a given historical and geographical context. The position defended here is that Weber generalizes Mill's methodological proposition of concept formation regarding economic rationality to accomplish his much larger project of determining the social factors responsible for the rationalization of the Western civilization.     

有限理性与自我主体意识

经济学界至今还没有对有限理性的成因找到一个公认的正确答案.通过实验,本文证明了经济主体的有限理性不是由于人脑计算能力的约束,也不是由于道德或社会规范的约束,而是因为受到其不愿尊重客体的自我主体意识的影响.本文还证实,自我主体意识是禀赋效应、现状偏爱现象、沉没成本谬误、占便宜悖论、Ellsberg悖论和分离效应等异常现象产生的真正原因.     

实践理性语境下的经济理性分析

作为价值观念、行为标准的经济理性,是在突破了作为方法论的经济理性的心理学假设层面的基础上,将应用范围不断扩大,而成为一种实践理性.本文分析了实践理性语境下的经济理性的确立历程,即经济理性是随资本主义的诞生而确立的,是在自然经济、商品经济走向现代市场经济的发展过程中而确立的,是资本主义科学理性在经济领域的展开与呈现.实践语境下的经济理性具有计算主义和统计化倾向、个人物质利益至上主义、工具化倾向三大主要特征.经济理性的内在特征将不可避免地使社会陷入现代性的困境,为突破经济理性的思维界限,摆脱经济理性的困境,经济和谐为当下社会的发展提供了一种很好的发展理路.     

Two-tier rationality and reflexivity: an examination of the foundations of economic reason

This paper develops a two-tier concept of rationality which broadens the orthodox notion of instrumental rationality in economics. In the first section, I conceive the idea of “background rationality” to consist in the ability to act normally, i.e., according to social conventions appropriate to the context. Background rationality is a necessary condition for the exercise of its instrumental counterpart. Implications and applications of this for economic phenomena are investigated in Section II. The third section draws parallels between the approach to rationality developed in this paper and Thorstein Veblen's notion “habits of thought”. I argue that a viable concept of rationality must itself be subject to explanatory scrutiny and justification and not merely posited as given.     

有限理性经济人假说下的财务报告列报和使用

本文在分析西蒙的有限理性经济人假说理论的基础上,论述了其经济意义:知识具有时间和主体的相对性;一般人们发现和选择的只能是满意的方案而不是最优方案;有限理性经济人在进行经济活动时,一般遵循的是程序理性穴Procedualrationality雪而非结果理性穴Rationalityofoutcome雪;无论是完全理性经济人假说,还是有限理性经济人假说,其本质都是经济人假说,经济人的行为动机一定是追求利益最大化。根据这一意义,提出了在有限理性经济人假说理论下,财务报告所列报的是根据财务报告目标要求,依据会计规则所产生的财务信息,这种财务信息必定存在“规则性失真”和信息的不完全性;此外,会计规则内容在不同时期会发生变动,以适应不同时期不同利益集团之间利益协调的改变,为此,财务报告的列报内容也会发生相应的改变。这一结论的现实意义是:人们使用财务报告时,首先,必须具备必要的经济学、会计学、管理学等相关知识;其次,对财务报告所提供的信息应允许有一定范围的“失真”;第三,对信息的不全面性和不完整性以及财务报告内容的变化要有充分的估计和思想准备。只有这样,才能正确地理解和使用财务报告。     

Psychological versus economic models of bounded rationality

That the rationality of individual people is ‘bounded’ – that is, finite in scope and representational reach, and constrained by the opportunity cost of time – cannot reasonably be controversial as an empirical matter. In this context, the paper addresses the question as to why, if economics is an empirical science, economists introduce bounds on the rationality of agents in their models only grudgingly and partially. The answer defended in the paper is that most economists are interested primarily in markets and only secondarily in the dynamics of individual decisions – specifically, they are interested in these dynamics mainly insofar as they might systematically influence the most useful approaches to modeling interesting markets. In market contexts, bounds on rationality are typically generated by institutional and informational properties specific to the market in question, which arise and are sustained by structural dynamics that do not originate in or reduce to individuals' decisions or psychological dispositions. To be sure, these influences interact with psychological dispositions, so economists have reason to attend to the psychology of valuation. But no general model of bounded rationality should ever be expected to feature in the economist's toolkit, regardless of the extent to which psychologists successfully identify specific human cognitive limitations. Use of moderate rational expectations assumptions should be understood in this light. Such assumptions are readily relaxed in specific applications, and in ways customized to modeling circumstances, that modelers, experimentalists, and econometricians are making steadily more sophisticated.     

Model uncertainty and the rationality of economic policy

This paper examines the process of economic policy-making under conditions of model uncertainty. A median voter model is introduced in which the electorate is uncertain of the policy measures available as well as their respective outcomes and opinion formation is a social process of communication and contagion. Learning from experience is also considered. It is shown that economic policy-making under uncertainty produces novel policy routines, but that a mechanism of efficiently utilising the generated knowledge is missing.JEL Classification: D78, D83, H73     

Accounting for economic evolution: Fitness and the population method

The theme of this paper is the general population dynamics of evolutionary processes, and, in particular, a number of accounting concepts that are central to any understanding of evolutionary processes of the variation-cum-selection retention kind. A population perspective, for example, turns out to be crucial to the study of the competitive process in economic systems defined at the level of industries, sectors and markets. Business rivalry, underpinned by differential innovative activity, is the basis of the differential survival and growth of competing economic activities and the strategies deployed to create sustainable differences in competitive selection characteristics are at the core of the capitalist dynamic interpreted as an adaptive, evolutionary process. This kind of evolutionary argument is necessarily concerned with growth rate dynamics and the explanation of the diversity of growth rates across entities in a population. However, the following discussion does not provide any causal explanation of economic evolution in terms of the determinants of growth rate differences, rather it provides a bookkeeping scheme in which different causal theories may be set and compared. Growth dynamics and structural change are the two central features of variation/selection processes within populations and I explore them in terms of three themes: namely, Logistic Growth Accounting; Competition Accounting; and, the Price Theorem. The unifying theme that links all three is their relation to the population method in evolutionary theory.      

The concept of Total Economic Value of environment: A reconsideration within a hierarchical rationality

Beyond a purely typological distinction between use, option and non-use values, these different environmental values are not treated differently within the concept of Total Economic Value. When expressed in monetary terms from individual preferences, these values are incorporated into a sole approach reasoning in terms of utility.In this paper, we argue that option and non-use values stem from more different levels of choice problems than use values and thus, must be apprehended in a multidimensional framework. We distinguish three levels of choice problem to which various rationality criteria of Social Cost-Benefit Analysis are attached. This allows us to make a distinction between the different components of the value of the environment according to the level of problems to which they're relevant. Thus, we propose to re-interpret the concept of Total Economic Value, particularly option and non-use values, within this multidimensional framework. We present an application of this framework for the selection of preferred highway route (highway A85 in France).     

Testing for rationality: the case of discrete choice data

When working with micro data on consumer demand, there are many different situations where decisions involve only discrete choices. In this context, conditions under which an underlying rational preference structure exists are derived. Moreover, by introducing flexibility into the model, it is possible to identify nonrational behavior in the sample.