Kahneman, Tversky, and Institutional Economics

摘要

For institutionalists, behavior depends on the habits, routines, and customs of economic actors. Habits, routines, and customs are how actors make decisions. They are matters of law and tradition, and they get passed along by examples, by the expectations of society, by social sanctions, and by the power of the state. People tend to follow these rules because they see everyone else doing so and because there are social rewards for doing so. When most people follow institutional rules, behavior becomes more certain and individuals are less likely to feel foolish by being wrong about important choices. Most institutionalists adopt this social view of human behavior. But there is an alternative to the social transmission of routines and habits. It is possible that behaviors have evolved over the course of human history and have survival value. With time, decision-making algorithms have become part of the human makeup and the architecture of the human mind. This approach to human behavior moves institutional economics toward evolutionary economics, a necessary step if economics is to progress (Hodgson 1998, 2004).