People often cite behavioral economics as the future of the general field. Without downplaying the interesting results of behavioral economics, in order to make sense of empirical results we still need theories which will simplify reality in many, many ways. How else will we understand in which situations the results are applicable, or even what the results are.

The best way to look at economics is as a “soft science” like biology. There is never going to be a law or model which completely describes human behavior the way a physicist describes thermodynamics. The world is just too complex. We can, however, use simplified models to gain insight about how the world works in certain situations.

ING-DiBa krise

Vor einer Falle beim Vergleich von Kreditangeboten warnt die ING-DiBa: Unter Umständen droht eine Herabstufung der Bonität durch die Schufa, die Schutzgemeinschaft für allgemeine Kreditsicherung. Das kann zur Folge haben, dass ein Kreditantrag abgelehnt wird oder der Kredit nur zu einem höheren Zinssatz zu erhalten ist.

Keine Gefahr besteht nach den Angaben der Experten, wenn eine Bank Einheitskonditionen für alle Kreditnehmer ausweist und beim Angebotsvergleich keine persönlichen Daten angegeben werden müssen. Aufpassen sollten Verbraucher bei der Jagd nach Kreditschnäppchen hingegen bei Banken, die den Zins von der Bonität des Kunden abhängig machen.

Erkennen lassen sich solche Angebote daran, dass kein fester Zinssatz ausgewiesen wird, sondern mit Begriffen wie beispielsweise “Ratenkredite ab 6,9 Prozent” geworben wird. Um ein konkretes Angebot zu erhalten, müssen Verbraucher bei solchen Geldinstituten ihre Adressdaten sowie weitere Angaben zur Einkommens- und Vermögenslage hinterlassen. Um den bonitätsabhängigen Zins zu ermitteln, fragt dann die Bank auf Basis dieser Daten bei der Schufa an

You just destroyed that straw man there! Unlike you guys, I'm not claiming that the other side of the argument has no merit whatsoever. I would, however, point out that very small changes in historical contingency could easily have had us arguing in spanish about the poor anglos who just can't get their shit together. This bizarro world, however, would most likely sustain a “complex order of spatially and temporally extended impersonal exchange” funded in large part by astronomical surpluses provided by fossil fuels.

You presume that all peoples will derive the same value from the magic box.

Well, I actually presume that multiple iterations of our little thought experiment would result in historical accidents that lead to different peoples deriving somewhat different values from the magic box, but that the results: a)would be unpredictable from the starting conditions; b) would rarely repeat; and c) would reveal that the process of development of the complex structures required to exploit the box would would create more congruencies between the successful societies than differences. Thanks for asking.

No more chance that our disagreement stems from an excessive love of parsimony on my part, huh?

That is, if the magic box is a given, it's these social constructs such as the rule of law and state recognition of contracts (enabling complex coordinated effort) that renders value from the magic box.

You presume that all peoples will derive the same value from the magic box. On this count I believe you're wrong.

In this scenario, the existence of the magic box serves as an incentive to develop the necessary complex systems to access it. Access to the magic box is the “return” part of “return on investment”. To turn this question around, how do these complex systems arise absent independently existing incentives? If access to the magic box is fully known in advance to be impossible, then the scenario is reduced to an observation that the absence of incentives is functionally equivalent to the absence of incentives.

Your impressive knowledge (credit where due!) of the empirical blind spots of economics vis a vis behavioral psychology seems matched by a lack of knowledge concerning a similar inability of mainstream economics to integrate itself with the empirical findings ecological/geophysical experts. How convenient for you that this ignorance is justified by the triviality/nonexistence of the issue! You really should get your findings published in the Journal of Ecological Economics before they shutter their operations!

The urge to snark would be easier to resist if you just claimed disinterest in the subject rather than offering such weak objections to to it's validity.

My Macro 301 course the problem of price stickiness–necessary to much of the Keynesian machinery–was explained as an artifact of contracts and transaction costs. It costs time & money to find cheaper, to relabel goods. Administrating auction markets costs even more.

But after that it all becomes much more reasonable. Real human beings aren't very good at rationality. Begin there. And construct a theory of markets based on assumptions of error, bias, mistakes and subsequent correction.

Really. Visit some slums. They may not have running water, and they will often depend on kerosene lights. But they will have a TV.

Even this sort of prehistoric scenario planning is unnecessary, though. If we really want to do science (that's gonna be a stretch for most economists, but let 'em try), then we're talking about models and hypotheses, not “the truth”. It may be easier to work with a baseline of zero than a baseline of epsilon. If the resulting theory allows us to make falsifiable predictions of future observations, then we have something we can use. If not, back to the drawing board. As my own little structuralist interlude above was meant to demonstrate, the less our economic theories depend on fevered aetiological imaginings of the state of nature, the better.