EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

The price of abstraction

Gregory Mitchell

Chapter 15 in Research Handbook on Behavioral Law and Economics, 2018, pp 459-475 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Behavioral law and economics’ effort to replace standard microeconomic assumptions with more realistic, yet still simple assumptions—without jettisoning a basic economic orientation toward behavior that emphasizes prices and utility maximization—has led to the acceptance of an oversimplified view of human judgment and decision-making. Supposedly descriptive claims found in Behavioral Law and Economics often ignore heterogeneity in results and interactions among variables, emphasize the existence of effects over the size of effects and their practical significance, avoid open questions about external validity, and embrace vague labels rather than delve into the multiple psychological processes and other non-psychological factors that may cause or account for behavior. The price of this abstraction is a lack of predictive and explanatory validity and an inability to provide reliable policy guidance.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Law - Academic (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781849805674.00027.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:14176_15

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-31
Handle: RePEc:elg:eechap:14176_15