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Is Behavioural Economics the New Mainstream?

Rethink Economics

January 13, 2019 - Since Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Memorial Price in Economic Sciences in 2002, a new branch of economics gained academic and popular interest. That is, the so-called area of behavioural economics. It is based on the idea that human behaviour is often driven by non-rational motives, which are not sufficiently included by standard economic models. In fact, neoclassical economics consider the homo economicus as its main unit of analysis. He is individualistic, as he only thought about his own interests. He is also perfectly rational, being able to rank the utilities of all his possible choices, and fully informed on

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Economics is…

Rethink Economics

January 11, 2019 - Economics is dogmatic and monolithic Nowadays, economics in universities is taught from a sole perspective. That is, economic theory both in books and classes is reduced to one single theory: the Neoclassical one. Justified by the evolution of the history of economic thought, economics narrowed its approach to Neoclassical theory by neglecting other ones: Marxist, Post-Keynesian, Austrian, Institutional, Ecological, Feminist, Complexity, Cooperative and Behavioural (Fischer, et al., 2018). Those schools of thought address a diverse range of issues, by tackling them with different angles and a broad set of objects of analysis. Instead, Neoclassical economics treats those issues by adopting

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Deliberate Misunderstandings in Economics: What Pluralism Really Means

Rethink Economics

January 1, 2019 - When you explain to your professor what Rethinking Economics does, it is common for them to say: ‘I agree on certain things, but not on others’. The issue is that the things they don’t agree with are rather fundamental. The first thing they find fault with is concerned with pluralism. According to them, economics is already pluralist enough in the sense that it already deals with different kinds of issues: from health, education, agriculture and development to wars, politics and elections. Many argue that the range of topics covered is becoming broader and wider over time, reflecting its well-established pluralism.

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