pro libertate net

Jon Elster’s inaugural lecture at the College de France is an instructive essay on reason, emotions and their link to rationality. In contrast to most of his other books that are quite heavy tomes (in volume and content), Reason and Rationality is a nice little book that really invites the reader to open it.

I wonder whether his presentation was as well delivered as this little book was written. Maybe I will finally dare to start reading his other contributions that are waiting on my book shelf – some already for several years.

Dan Friedman’s Morals and Markets is a nice complement to the multidisciplinary collection Moral Markets that I read earlier. Friedman provides an historical account of the interdependence of well functioning markets and moral sentiments and thus an evolutionary perspective that is not limited to economics as he also discusses the respective impact on societal structures and vice versa.

Friedman offers a rather balanced discussion of the benefits and perils of a moral society, when markets need morals and when markets are choked by them. Solely the joint discussion of terrorist and religious groups may seem a bit controversial.

Morals and Markets is not an academic textbook. It tells a coherent story by a sequence of (true) anecdotes that is easily accessible to anyone. In fact, it is quite entertaining while still being instructive.

In the end, Friedman argues convincingly that the major challenge will be to realign morals and markets such that they work together and thus help to improve our society.

Is economics an amoral science? No, though sometimes it seems so. Look at what is taught at most business schools and economics departments and you might certainly get this impression. Indeed, the focus on the rational decision maker – a rather selfish sociopath – in most curricula in business, law and economics may be a cause for the rather unscrupulous behavior that can be observed in the current business world: Greed is good.

The world is not amoral. Even markets are not. Successful economic exchange without trust, reciprocity, honesty and some sense of fairness seems hardly possible. At least if you listen to the diverse team of authors of Moral Markets. And I tend to agree.

Moral Markets is the result of several years of collaborative research and discussion (the list of contributors is rather impressive). It reviews the critical role of social norms in the economy from a diverse set of fields and points of view. The discussion ranges from biology, the animal world and evolutionary arguments to philosophical questions (and answers) and an analysis of our current perception of the economy to the interdependence of social norms and law and of course (economic) behavior. The main message is clear. Without a social conscience we would not be as successful as we were so far. And it is unlikely that we will keep up the pace if we forget the importance of social norms, values and virtues.

Ken Binmore’s Rational Decisions is not quite what I expected when I first read just the title. It is, however, something you should very much expect from Ken Binmore. He is an excellent Game Theorist. And even though he eyes current experimental economics rather critically, i.e. he is just more skeptical about some of the claims your standard experimental economists (or are these rather behavioral economists?) are willing to make, his research is very much based on empirical findings, experiments and the boundedness of human capabilities and facilities.

Rational Decisions is about Bayesian Decision Theory. It is about where it can apply and where not. Bayesian Decision Theory It is useful in Games, in situation in which everything is known up to an exactly quantified level of risk. It is utterly “ridiculous” if the decision maker instead is confronted with uncertainty as is the case in the real world where most events do not have a unique objective probability.

Rational Decisions is, therefore, about filling the gap between Decision Making under risk and Decision Making under uncertainty. In my opinion, it is ultimately about an instance of Bounded Rationality.

Binmore gives a comprehensive overview of the standard economic model of decision making and its limitations. He explores the foundations of this model, reviews the historical context and clarifies how Economic Theory has to be interpreted, that current Economic Theory (i.e. the concept of revealed preferences and utility) is not concerned with psychological motives at all.

His writing is witty and opinionated, yet, succinct and clear. Though, sometimes the math made me think twice… All in all, Rational Decisions is a very enlightening experience.

I am not at an economics department any more. Yet, I am still interested in the profession. Maybe even more interested than a few years before. David Colander provides with The Making of an Economist, Redux a brief overview about the state of the economics curriculum and the economics student at a few of the elite US universities in the early 2000.

I am a little bit disappointed, disillusioned and reaffirmed.

Disappointed because I expected more from this book. The content is mostly fine as far as the topic allows. The presentation, however, could be improved considerably. All the endless tables should have been made into less messy and more clear graphical illustrations. Or at least been complemented with them. The data analysis is cursory, yes. But, I guess this serves a purpose. The data may suffer from several biases and the current analysis does not pretend any false precision or representativeness.

Disillusioned because US economics students may be even more ignorant than I would have thought before. The system really seems to produce basically only a conforming mass of idiot savants.

Reaffirmed because there seems to be only minor differences between the economics education in the US and Germany. In both places the history of economic thought and more broader philosophical questions are not addressed any more – at economics departments. General knowledge about economics is under-appreciated and training focuses on producing least publishable units.

I wonder: Is there any comparable research done for Germany and / or Europe?