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Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty : Three Centuries of Economic Decision-Making / George G. Szpiro.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: New York, NY : Columbia University Press, [2020]Copyright date: ©2020Description: 1 online resource : 20 figuresContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780231194747
  • 9780231550970
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 330.01/9 23
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART ONE. HAPPINESS AND THE UTILITY OF WEALTH -- 1. IT ALL BEGAN WITH A PARADOX -- 2. MORE IS BETTER . . . -- 3. . . . AT A DECREASING RATE -- PART TWO. MATHEMATICS IS THE QUEEN OF THE SCIENCES . . . -- 4. THE MARGINALIST TRIUMVIRATE -- 5. FORGOTTEN PRECURSORS -- 6. BETTING ON ONE’S BELIEF -- 7. GAMES ECONOMISTS PLAY -- 8. WOBBLY CURVES -- 9. COMPARING THE INCOMPARABLE -- PART THREE. . . . BUT MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS -- 10. MORE PARADOXES -- 11. GOOD ENOUGH -- 12. SUNK COSTS, THE GAMBLER’S FALLACY, AND OTHER ERRORS -- 13. ERRONEOUS, IRRATIONAL, OR PLAIN DUMB? -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX
Summary: At its core, economics is about making decisions. In the history of economic thought, great intellectual prowess has been exerted toward devising exquisite theories of optimal decision making in situations of constraint, risk, and scarcity. Yet not all of our choices are purely logical, and so there is a longstanding tension between those emphasizing the rational and irrational sides of human behavior. One strand develops formal models of rational utility maximizing while the other draws on what behavioral science has shown about our tendency to act irrationally.In Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty, George G. Szpiro offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. Szpiro examines economics from the early days of theories spun from anecdotal evidence to the rise of a discipline built around elegant mathematics through the past half century’s interest in describing how people actually behave. Considering the work of Locke, Bentham, Jevons, Walras, Friedman, Tversky and Kahneman, Thaler, and a range of other thinkers, he sheds light on the vast scope of discovery since Bernoulli first proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox. Presenting fundamental mathematical theories in easy-to-understand language, Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a revelatory history for readers seeking to grasp the grand sweep of economic thought.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780231550970

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART ONE. HAPPINESS AND THE UTILITY OF WEALTH -- 1. IT ALL BEGAN WITH A PARADOX -- 2. MORE IS BETTER . . . -- 3. . . . AT A DECREASING RATE -- PART TWO. MATHEMATICS IS THE QUEEN OF THE SCIENCES . . . -- 4. THE MARGINALIST TRIUMVIRATE -- 5. FORGOTTEN PRECURSORS -- 6. BETTING ON ONE’S BELIEF -- 7. GAMES ECONOMISTS PLAY -- 8. WOBBLY CURVES -- 9. COMPARING THE INCOMPARABLE -- PART THREE. . . . BUT MAN IS THE MEASURE OF ALL THINGS -- 10. MORE PARADOXES -- 11. GOOD ENOUGH -- 12. SUNK COSTS, THE GAMBLER’S FALLACY, AND OTHER ERRORS -- 13. ERRONEOUS, IRRATIONAL, OR PLAIN DUMB? -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

At its core, economics is about making decisions. In the history of economic thought, great intellectual prowess has been exerted toward devising exquisite theories of optimal decision making in situations of constraint, risk, and scarcity. Yet not all of our choices are purely logical, and so there is a longstanding tension between those emphasizing the rational and irrational sides of human behavior. One strand develops formal models of rational utility maximizing while the other draws on what behavioral science has shown about our tendency to act irrationally.In Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty, George G. Szpiro offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. Szpiro examines economics from the early days of theories spun from anecdotal evidence to the rise of a discipline built around elegant mathematics through the past half century’s interest in describing how people actually behave. Considering the work of Locke, Bentham, Jevons, Walras, Friedman, Tversky and Kahneman, Thaler, and a range of other thinkers, he sheds light on the vast scope of discovery since Bernoulli first proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox. Presenting fundamental mathematical theories in easy-to-understand language, Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a revelatory history for readers seeking to grasp the grand sweep of economic thought.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Jan 2023)