Search

This paper studies the controversy on Fehr and Schmidt's model of inequity aversion. It borrows insights from disciplines such as philosophy and the sociology of science that have specialized in studying scientific controversies. Our goal is to contribute to the historical and methodological literature on behavioral economics, which happens to have neglected behavioral economists' research on social preferences. Our analysis of the controversy reveals some new insights about the relation of behavioral economics with other sub-fields in economics, as well as with other disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 modeling is an activity that is constrained by the (implicit and explicit) rules underlying the accumulation of academic prestige within economics and at the same time can be a means to change these rules. Secondly, we are interested in how, for a given model, this dynamic can be influenced by the use(s) of that model outside of economics. We first provide a restatement of Brisset's [(2018). Models as speech acts: The telling case of financial models. Journal of Economic Methodology, 25(1), 21–41] original contribution. We then put this clarified methodological perspective to work on a new case study, i.e. on the dual models at the frontier between behavioral and standard economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistics is a minor topic in historical and methodological writings on experimental economics. This article aims to address this lacuna. To do so, we conduct a quantitative analysis of papers published in the 1970–2010 period. We also provide qualitative insights through comparisons with econometrics and psychology. Our results reveal a significant change in experimental economics's statistical methods, namely an evolution from purely descriptive methods to more sophisticated and standardized techniques. We highlight that, by contrast with psychology and econometrics, this evolution was not accompanied with explicit methodological discussions about the role of statistics in empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 ofeconomicagents 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 threetensions: 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. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 BiasesandEcological 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to replicate the effect of a nudge on behavior (efficiency) and acceptability in a natural field experiment. The nudge in our study consists in setting zero sugars as the default level of sugar in hot drinks–vending machines in a French university. We compared Campus A (default option set to 0 sugars) to Campus B (default option set to 3 sugars). We measured the efficiency of this default option by observing the level of sugar actually chosen by the participants, and we measured acceptability through a questionnaire. We hypothesized a high level of efficiency for the nudge and a higher acceptability in Campus A (default option set to 0 sugars) compared to Campus B (default option set to 3 sugars). Our results show that participants with the default option set to zero sugars (Campus A) consumed less sugar than those with the default option set to 3 sugars (Campus B). We also found a high level of acceptability on both campuses, though with no difference between Campus A (where the nudge was implemented) and Campus B (where a future nudge would be implemented). The discussion addresses the applied perspectives and ethical implications of these results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]