Sebastian ... Why do you use the
term "disruption" in the title? Disruption means breaking with a
previous order ... Where does all this movement take us?
However, in recent years, for different reasons that I explain in the book, Cognitive Neurosciences, Psychology and Economics have come together, now in a disruptive way, building this hybrid called Neuroeconomics, which with methods different from the traditional ones, is trying to put together a unified theory of decisions, more real, more empirical, and with methods quite different from the "revealed preferences", "homo economicus", "utilitarism" and other traditional ones in Economics.
But as the neoclassical models predicted more or less well, according to Milton Friedman, the thing was respectable ... until they began to "annoy" the behaviorists economist, with Allais, Simon, Kahneman, Thaler, etc. and now Neuroeconomics, with Glimcher and his guys. So ... at this point, disruption is already evident and unpredictable, which makes it more intellectually exciting.
Look ... people make decisions
permanently under bounded (limited) rationality, that is, subject to all kinds of biases,
of which you imagine, which lead us to behave in a rather sub-optimal way with
respect to what Neoclassical Economics says, a theory which is not intended for human
beings of flesh and blood, but ideal beings that do not exist on Earth.
Behavioral Economics has
been putting Neoclassical Economics in trouble for at least four decades, with
the nobel prizes Simon, Kahneman and Thaler, among others, but always within the path of Economics, there was not something disruptive, in fact Behavioral Economics is a branch of Economics.
However, in recent years, for different reasons that I explain in the book, Cognitive Neurosciences, Psychology and Economics have come together, now in a disruptive way, building this hybrid called Neuroeconomics, which with methods different from the traditional ones, is trying to put together a unified theory of decisions, more real, more empirical, and with methods quite different from the "revealed preferences", "homo economicus", "utilitarism" and other traditional ones in Economics.
Why Kahneman and Glimcher in the
subtitle, if one of them (the nobel Kahneman) comes from Behavioral Economics and not from Neuroeconomics?
Remember that Behavioral
Economics is one of the legs of Neuroeconomics, and Kahneman is the symbol of
that school, with its Prospect Theory, Systems 1 and 2, and its book
"Think Fast, Think Slow," its best seller And Glimcher, on the other
side ... is the symbol of the other leg, the one that comes from Cognitive
Neuroscience, which also questions Kahneman's theory of conflict 1-2. That is,
in the title I wanted to name the two banners that symbolize the
countercurrents of this new approach called Neuroeconomics.
Are we humans too little rational
or too emotional?
Neither one nor the other,
rationality and emotionality are parts of the same whole, I think. You can not
understand rationality without the emotional, in fact the orbitofrontal cortex,
which is cortex, that is a priori "rational brain", is the great
integrating center of the emotional signal of value, that is behind all the pure
prices of the economy, that is, the utility curves that predetermined our
subjective value, with deep roots in the nucleus accumbens, which in turn is limbic brain, that is, "emotional brain". That is, the
"limbic-frontal cortex" interaction is permanent, and
multidirectional, as Glimcher argues, which makes emotionality and rationality
part of the same whole.
Why so many years of Economics
without Psychology, or rather, with a Psychology as "primitive" as
the utilitarian, as the great Schumpeter said?
Because the epistemological
diktat of the twentieth century was leading Economics to dispense little by
little from Psychology, with which he was born (remember Adam Smith with his
Theory of Moral Sentiments), and to look for a certain "seriousness"
in mathematics optimizing, and in the utilitarian and Pareto logic, which
dispensed with the emotional, since Pareto "homo economicus" decided with high
computational skills, without biases, without fears, and without anything that
makes us profoundly human.
But as the neoclassical models predicted more or less well, according to Milton Friedman, the thing was respectable ... until they began to "annoy" the behaviorists economist, with Allais, Simon, Kahneman, Thaler, etc. and now Neuroeconomics, with Glimcher and his guys. So ... at this point, disruption is already evident and unpredictable, which makes it more intellectually exciting.
Mention me specific contributions
of Neuroeconomics, issues that are progressing thanks to these
developments.
Look ... Neuroeconomics is
already making interesting contributions in Marketing, Market Research and
Finance, to name a few, but without a doubt the great challenge is that it is
beginning to have an impact on Public Policies, that is, in the way that
educational policies, health prevention, transit, security, etc. are designed and executed. In fact, it is in public policies where we are going to see the great social
utility of this new discipline, in fact there are already several important
academics and consultants on that path, such as the Behavioral Insights
movement in Europe, among others.
What can the reader expect from
this book?
I clarify the book is quite artisan,
homemade, done with a lot of love and passion, but totally outside of publishing industry. However, there are many years of study behind this work,
where the reader will find a good foundation of this novel discipline, and some
of its main experiments and research. It will surprise the reader of the
material I show.
Note: Sebastián Laza is
an Argentine economist, specialized in the interrelation between Behavioral Economics
and Cognitive Neuroscience.
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