Rethinking basically Economic Assumption on Individual Behavior from Empirical Viewpoints of Evolution and Behavior

Liang Zhao (zhaoliang1967@gmail.com)

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Building on the predecessors' thoughts and modern researches from empirical disciplines, and with thinking over the behavior assumption usually held and used by mainstream economics, the paper generalizes three basic assumptions and one explanatory framework on human individual behavior and its process, and stresses hierarchical characteristics in preferences, heterogeneity between learning capacity and learning and, human dealing with and reducing uncertainty from environments in the process of natural evolution, and rethinks the questions of individual rationality, acquirement of behavior mode, intellectual history on "knowledge" in the level of experientialism. The purpose is that along the path of "falsifying a theory" and with the help of empirical results, the paper trys to propose behavioral presuppositions and thinking framework, so that enhancing the effectiveness of economic theory on explaining individual behavior in real situations, and in the end advancing transdisciplinary researches between the empirical and social sciences.

Keywords: assumption; explanatory framework; individual behavior; hierarchical preference; learning capacity; knowledge; evolutionary process; empirical substrate; transdiscipline (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 B21 B31 B59 D01 D8 Y80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008-10-15
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-hpe, nep-knm and nep-pke
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:11152

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