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The aim of this article is to better understand how judgements about nudge acceptability are formed and whether they can be manipulated. We conducted a randomized experiment withN= 171 participants to test whether acceptability judgements could be (1) more favourable when the decision to implement the nudges was made following a consultation with the targeted population and (2) influenced by the joint framing of the nudge's purpose and effectiveness (in terms of an increase in desirable behaviour versus decrease in undesirable behaviour). We tested these hypotheses on various nudge scenarios and obtained mixed results that do not clearly support our hypotheses for all nudge scenarios. A surprising result that calls for further work is that by mentioning that a nudge had been implemented through a consultation with the targeted population its acceptability could be lowered.

The aim of this article is to better understand how judgments about nudge acceptability are formed and whether they can be manipulated. We conducted a randomized experiment to test whether acceptability judgments could be (i) more favourable when the decision to implement the nudges was made following a consultation with the targeted population and (ii) influenced by the joint framing of the nudge's goal and effectiveness (in terms of an increase in desirable behaviour vs. decrease in undesirable behaviour). We tested these hypotheses on various nudge scenarios and obtained mixed results that do not clearly support our hypotheses. A surprising result that calls for further work is that by mentioning that a nudge had been implemented through a consultation with the targeted population its acceptability could be lowered.

We propose a theoretical perspective on framing effects where decision makers violate the axiom of description invariance. We first propose a framework that makes this axiom explicit and then we weaken it to allow for description dependence. This framework provides a structure to disentangle different violations of description invariance. We then identify a particular class of violations that we call tidy description-dependent preferences, which are compatible with a transitive preference relation over the consequences of the choice set. We show that many violations observed in the literature are actually in this class.

The goal of this paper is to provide a methodological perspective on economic models that accounts for some sociological dimensions of economics, in two senses. Firstly, we are interested in how mo...

This paper discusses the similarities and differences in the plurality of practices regarding the use of interviews by historians of economics – i.e., either the use of someone else's interviews as sources or the use of interviews conducted by the historian for her or his work.

Dans « Le paradoxe d’Allais. Comment lui rendre sa signification perdue ? », Philippe Mongin [2014] propose une image contestable, parce qu’abusivement rassurante, de la rationalite des sujets participant aux experiences de MacCrimmon et Larsson [1979]. Nous montrons cela en restituant les donnees des auteurs pour l’effet de consequence commune et l’effet de rapport commun (deux paradoxes d’Allais), que Mongin assimile, bien qu’il distingue ces deux effets. Deux tendances dans les donnees nous conduisent a rejoindre Mongin pour conclure que ces experiences sont une source d’inspiration fructueuse pour la theorie de la decision, ce que nous illustrons brievement par le role qu’elles ont joue dans l’apparition de l’utilite esperee dependante du rang et dans le tournant interindividuel en psychologie cognitive de la decision.

This chapter conducts a systematic comparison of behavioral economics’s challenges to the standard accounts of economic behaviors within three dimensions: under risk, over time, and regarding other people. A new perspective on two underlying methodological issues, i.e., inter-disciplinarity and the positive/normative distinction, is proposed by following the entanglement thesis of Hilary Putnam, Vivian Walsh, and Amartya Sen. This thesis holds that facts, values, and conventions have inter-dependent meanings in science which can be understood by scrutinizing formal and ordinary language uses. The goal is to provide a broad and self-contained picture of how behavioral economics is changing the mainstream of economics.

This paper conducts a systematic comparison of behavioral economics’s challenges to the standard accounts of economic behaviors within three dimensions: under risk, over time and regarding other people. A new perspective on two underlying methodological issues, i.e., interdisciplinarity and the positive/normative distinction, is proposed by following the entanglement thesis of Hilary Putnam, Vivian Walsh and Amartya Sen. This thesis holds that facts, values and conventions have interdependent meanings in science which can be understood by scrutinizing formal and ordinary language uses. The goal is to provide a broad and self-contained picture of how behavioral economics is changing the mainstream of economics.

International audience; Experimental economists increasingly apply econometric techniques to interpret their data, as suggests the emergence of " experimetrics " in the 2000s. Yet statistics remains a minor topic in historical and methodological writings on experimental economics (EE). This article aims to address this lacuna. To do so, we analyze the use of statistical tools in EE from early economics experiments of the 1940s-1950s to the present days. Our narrative is based on qualitative analysis of papers published in early periods and quantitative analysis of papers published in more recent periods. Our results reveal a significant change in EE' statistical methods, namely an evolution from purely descriptive methods to more sophisticated and standardized techniques. We also highlight that, despite the decisive role played by statistics in the way EE estimate the rationality of individuals or markets, statistics are still considered as involving non-methodological issues, i.e., as involving only purely technical issues. Our historical analysis shows that this technical conception was the result of a long-run evolution of the process of scientific legitimization of EE, which allowed experimental economists to escape from psychologist's more reflexive culture toward statistics.

This chapter discusses the similarities and differences in the plurality of practices regarding the use of interviews by historians of economics – i.e., either the use of someone else’s interviews as sources or the use of interviews conducted by the historian for her or his work. It draws on methodological and historiographical contributions from other disciplines where the use of interviews is more systematic to characterize the practices in our discipline and to sometimes suggest further or new development.

We propose a historical perspective on replication in experimental economics focused on public good games. Our intended contribution is twofold: in terms of method and in terms of object. Methodologically, we blend traditional qualitative history of economics with a less traditional quantitative approach using basic econometric tools to detect unnoticed historical patterns of replication. In terms of our object, we highlight a type of replication that we call " baseline replication " , which is not present in explicit methodological discussions, yet central in the specificity of experimental economics regarding replication in economics.

Experimental economists increasingly apply econometric techniques to interpret their data, as suggested the emergence of "experimetrics" in the 2000's (Camerer, 2003; Houser, 2008; Moffatt, 2015). Yet statistics remains a minor topic in experimental economics' (EE) methodology. This article aims to study the historical roots of this present paradox. To do so, we analyze the use of statistical tools in EE from early economics experiments of the 1940's-1950's to the present days. Our narrative is based on qualitative analysis of published papers for the earliest periods and on bibliometric and quantitative approaches for the more recent time period. Our results reveal a significant change in EE' statistical methods, from purely descriptive methods to more sophisticated and standardized techniques. Statistics now plays a decisive role in the way EE estimates rationality, particularly in structural modeling approaches, but it is still considered as a non-methodological, because purely technical, matter. Our historical analysis shows that this technical conception was the result of a long-run evolution of research tactics in EE, that notably allowed experimental economists to escape from psychologist's more reflexive culture toward statistics.

International audience; We critically survey explicit discussions of the narrativity of economic agents by economists. Narrativity broadly refers to the way humans construct and use stories, notably to define their personal identity. We borrow from debates outside of economics to provide the critical dimension of our survey. Most contributions on the narrativity of economic agents do not discuss one another. To establish communication , we suggest a structure of oppositions that characterize these contributions taken as a whole. These oppositions are notably characterized by three tensions: in terms of methodological attitudes ('scientism' vs. 'humanism'), of underlying theories of personal identity postulating the existence of a unique sense of self or not ('diachronicity' vs. 'episodicity') and of the normative implications of narrativity ('welfare-increasing' vs. 'welfare-decreasing'). The main goal is to clarify the structure of opposite positions within a more or less explicit debate about the identity of individuals in economics.

This paper focuses on the opposition between two contemporary research programs in economics: behavioral economics (BE) and experimental market economics (EME). Our claim is that the arguments of this opposition can be clarified through the lens of another opposition in the philosophy of probability and in probability theory, between Bayesianism and frequentism. We show how this probabilistic opposition has indirectly shaped a controversy in psychology that opposes two research programs - Heuristics and Biases and Ecological Rationality - which play respective roles in the foundations of individual rationality in BE and EME. To understand these theoretical interrelationships, we investigate the 1996 controversy between Kahneman, Tversky, and Gigerenzer. Those psychologists held different views on how probabilistic representations influence the context-dependency of rationality. This provides a rationale to suggest that a probabilistic ghost may be haunting the experimental machine in economics, and explains how and why the oppositions between BE and EME are structured around the interplay between the norms of rationality and the context in which rationality is exercised.

Choix de pommes et comportements intentionnels : lorsque Amartya Sen rencontre John Dewey L’article suggere que certaines dimensions de la conception de la rationalite economique developpee par Amartya Sen peuvent se consolider au travers de la philosophie de l’esprit de John Searle. Plus precisement, la theorie searlienne de l’intentionnalite fournit un appareil conceptuel pertinent pour renforcer la conceptualisation senienne des preferences dependantes du contexte. Les arguments developpes ici concernent trois problemes contemporains qui sont interconnectes autour de la rationalite economique et discutes en methodologie de l’economie : (1) le dualisme methodologique et les explications intentionnalistes en economie, (2) les relations entre economie et philosophie, et (3) l’emergence recente de l’economie comportementale dans le ‘mainstream’ de la theorie economique.JEL classification: B00, B40, B41, B49