On 10/4/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On 10/4/07, raghu <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > And the behaviorists? Will their work ever produce more than clever > > anecdotes for Steven Levitt? > > FWIW, Leavitt doesn't do experiments. He's not a behavioral economist. >
Jim, Levitt does not do experiments himself but he likes to cite data from behavioral experiments to illustrate his famous Rogue Economics technique. For e.g., in a lecture at Princeton he referred to research by John List on the "Dictator Game", and went on to argue how it is entirely consistent with the self-interested individuals hypothesis. In this game, one subject (the dictator) is given $10.00, and is then given a choice - to either give part of the $10.00 to another subject, or to give nothing, or even to steal some or all of $10.00 from the other. Levitt says that apparently altruistic behavior found in this experiment is merely an artifact of the subjects trying to win the approval of the experimenter. http://uc.princeton.edu/main/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=719&Itemid=7 Of course using such reasoning he can easily dismiss the entire body of behavioral economics, which is exactly why that work will never amount to more than clever stories. Behaviorists are to neo-classical economics, what Zeno's paradoxes are mathematical Analysis. -raghu. > > Rare corner cases where the "normal" laws > > of rational behavior do not apply, in essence the exceptions that > > prove the rule. > > > > With enemies like these who needs friends? > > I dunno. Experimentalists have shown something we already knew but the > Ekon (the dominant herd) doesn't: people aren't the individualists > that textbooks assert. >
