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The goal of behavioral economics was to prove that neoclassical economics, the current dominant paradigm taught at schools and used by mainstream economists, st

The goal of behavioral economics was to prove that neoclassical economics, the current dominant paradigm taught at schools and used by mainstream economists, stand on completely erroneous assumption - that humans behave as perfectly rational agents. It was never supposed to become the replacing paradigm. It doesn't have its own theory of how individual behaviour (microeconomics) composes into system behaviour (macroeconomics). But it showed that just summing up individual behaviour of independently and identically distributed individuals doesn't give you the macro picture that should tell us something about the real world either. It at best can describe a simulated game world, which only occassionally predicts something about our world. Behavioral economics is de facto applied psychology and as such you'd obviously expect it to have study replication problems. Of course it will never be fully exact science as it tries to explain an evolving dynamic system of nonuniform units. Does it render it useless as the author points out? - unlikely.

Veen 5y ago
If its goal was to prove that neoclassical economics is based on an erroneous assumption, then it was successful. However, it's worthwhile emphasizing that behavioural economics findings taken seriously by thousands of psychologists, marketers, writers, politicians, civil servants, and laypeople are a load of cobblers. The field's most prominent findings—loss aversion, priming, ego depletion—fail to replicate. That shoud be publicized as widely as possible, lest the millions who have read and adopted behavioural economics concepts continue to use them to guide treatment, government policy, business practice, etc.
- yann2 5y ago
  Ofcourse they should be taken seriousiusly. What do you want the "millions" to do instead? Pretend everyone is rational? Once upon a time we tried classifying every chimp according to the big 5 personality trait model. Now thanks to Fuckerberg & Co and their data, you can find almost 100 different traits in the chimp troupe. Who knows what the upper limit is? Its like the phase chemistry went through where suddenly new elements were being discovered every week. It all just shows us the world is much more complicated than we think.
  - analog31 5y ago
    >>>> What do you want the "millions" to do instead? Pretend everyone is rational? Perhaps yes, at least as a starting point until better evidence produces a replicable, actionable model.

Veen 5y ago

If its goal was to prove that neoclassical economics is based on an erroneous assumption, then it was successful. However, it's worthwhile emphasizing that behavioural economics findings taken seriously by thousands of psychologists, marketers, writers, politicians, civil servants, and laypeople are a load of cobblers. The field's most prominent findings—loss aversion, priming, ego depletion—fail to replicate. That shoud be publicized as widely as possible, lest the millions who have read and adopted behavioural economics concepts continue to use them to guide treatment, government policy, business practice, etc.

yann2 5y ago
Ofcourse they should be taken seriousiusly. What do you want the "millions" to do instead? Pretend everyone is rational? Once upon a time we tried classifying every chimp according to the big 5 personality trait model. Now thanks to Fuckerberg & Co and their data, you can find almost 100 different traits in the chimp troupe. Who knows what the upper limit is? Its like the phase chemistry went through where suddenly new elements were being discovered every week. It all just shows us the world is much more complicated than we think.
- analog31 5y ago
  >>>> What do you want the "millions" to do instead? Pretend everyone is rational? Perhaps yes, at least as a starting point until better evidence produces a replicable, actionable model.