The Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics: A Handbook, ed. Andrew Caplin and Andrew Schotter

摘要

In November 2005 Faruk Gul and Wolfgang Pesendorfer, two prominent economists at Princeton University, published a polemical working paper entitled 'The Case for Mindless Economies'. The main goal of the paper was to show that psychological and neural evidence cannot be used to support or reject standard economic models, and hence is not directly relevant to economic theory. To attain this goal, Gul and Pesendorfer (henceforth GP) pictured standard positive economics as concerned only with observable choices, and welfare economics as characterized by the identification of what is better for the individuals with what they choose.