Humanizing The Economic Actors In Economics/NYT on AEA Conference Address

Interesting article about the annual January gathering of thousands of economists at the biggest economics conference in the world.

I was a psychology major in college and loved all of the strange experiments involving humans in social situations. I was surprised when I studied economics in graduate school and I discovered that almost all economists' models made patently false assumptions about the nature of human interaction.

Perhaps, the preference of the discipline for assumptions about humans that make us perfectly rational, maximizing egoists is about to undergo some changes. This is a critique from within the ruling schools of economics.

I am hopeful that the discipline will change faster than Paul Samuelson's quip that economics tended to change only "one funeral at a time."

Thomas Palley » Blog Archive » The Knowledge Police in Economics

From Eric:
Thomas Palley » Blog Archive » The Knowledge Police in Economics

btw, anything that's not private can be posted directly to this blog by all members (that's ALL the econ department @ Rollins). The easiest way is to use the google toolbar (free download) -- ask me for help :-)