The Making of Behavioral Development Economics

Allison Demeritt and Karla Hoff

History of Political Economy, 2018, vol. 50, issue 5, 303-322

Abstract: A core insight of behavioral economics is that we are “fast thinkers†; very little human thinking resembles the rational, deliberate type that charac-terizes homo economicus. What is less well recognized is that our innate reliance on cognitive shortcuts means that mental models—categories, concepts, narratives, and worldviews—profoundly influence our decision making by unconsciously shaping what we perceive and the “toolbox†of strategies we draw on to respond. Many researchers have connected this idea to economic development, yet they rarely identify their work as “behavioral†economics. We use recent research to show how a second strand of behavioral economics illuminates the tight interlinkages between preferences, culture, and institutions and brings the discipline almost full circle back to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century perspectives. We caution against the strong reductionist tendencies that attempt to squeeze sociological influences on decision making into a rational-agent model.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1215/00182702-7034004 link to full text (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hop:hopeec:v:50:y:2018:i:5:p:303-322

Access Statistics for this article

History of Political Economy is currently edited by Kevin D. Hoover

More articles in History of Political Economy from Duke University Press Duke University Press 905 W. Main Street, Suite 18B Durham, NC 27701.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Center for the History of Political Economy Webmaster (pauldude@duke.edu).