« Risky Decisions: How Mathematical Paradoxes and Other Conundrums Have Shaped Economic Science
Risky Decisions: How Mathematical Paradoxes and Other Conundrums Have Shaped Economic Science
December 03, 2020, 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location:
Online Event
George Szpiro, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Abstract: At its core, economics is about making decisions. In the history of economic thought, great intellectual prowess has been exerted toward devising exquisite theories of optimal decision making in situations of constraint, risk, and scarcity. Yet not all of our choices are purely logical, and so there is a longstanding tension between those emphasizing the rational and irrational sides of human behavior. One strand develops formal models of rational utility maximizing while the other draws on what behavioral science has shown about our tendency to act irrationally.