2,624 research outputs found

    Neuroeconomics: Using Neuroscience to Make Economic Predictions

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    Neuroeconomics seeks to ground economic theory in detailed neural mechanisms which are expressed mathematically and make behavioural predictions. One finding is that simple kinds of economising for life-and-death decisions (food, sex and danger) do occur in the brain as rational theories assume. Another set of findings appears to support the neural basis of constructs posited in behavioural economics, such as a preference for immediacy and nonlinear weighting of small and large probabilities. A third direction shows how understanding neural circuitry permits predictions and causal experiments which show state-dependence of revealed preference – except that states are biological and neural variables

    Scarce Means with Alternative Uses: Robbins’ Definition of Economics and Its Extension to the Behavioral and Neurobiological Study of Animal Decision Making

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    Almost 80 years ago, Lionel Robbins proposed a highly influential definition of the subject matter of economics: the allocation of scarce means that have alternative ends. Robbins confined his definition to human behavior, and he strove to separate economics from the natural sciences in general and from psychology in particular. Nonetheless, I extend his definition to the behavior of non-human animals, rooting my account in psychological processes and their neural underpinnings. Some historical developments are reviewed that render such a view more plausible today than would have been the case in Robbins’ time. To illustrate a neuroeconomic perspective on decision making in non-human animals, I discuss research on the rewarding effect of electrical brain stimulation. Central to this discussion is an empirically based, functional/computational model of how the subjective intensity of the electrical reward is computed and combined with subjective costs so as to determine the allocation of time to the pursuit of reward. Some successes achieved by applying the model are discussed, along with limitations, and evidence is presented regarding the roles played by several different neural populations in processes posited by the model. I present a rationale for marshaling convergent experimental methods to ground psychological and computational processes in the activity of identified neural populations, and I discuss the strengths, weaknesses, and complementarity of the individual approaches. I then sketch some recent developments that hold great promise for advancing our understanding of structure–function relationships in neuroscience in general and in the neuroeconomic study of decision making in particular

    Rattus Psychologicus: Construction of preferences by self-stimulating rats

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    Behavioral economists have proposed that human preferences are constructed during their elicitation and are thus influenced by the elicitation procedure. For example, different preferences are expressed when options are encountered one at a time or concurrently. This phenomenon has been attributed to differences in the “evaluability” of a particular attribute when comparison to an option with a different value of this attribute is or is not available. Research on the preferences of laboratory animals has often been carried out by means of operant conditioning methods. Formal treatments of operant behavior relate preferences to variables such as the strength and cost of reward but do not address the evaluability of these variables. Two experiments assessed the impact of procedural factors likely to alter the evaluability of an opportunity cost (“price”): the work time required for a rat to earn a train of rewarding electrical brain stimulation. The results support the notion that comparison between recently encountered prices is necessary to render the price variable highly evaluable. When price is held constant over many trials and test sessions, the evaluability of this variable appears to decline. Implications are discussed for the design of procedures for estimating subjective reward strengths and costs in operant conditioning experiments aimed at characterizing, identifying and understanding neural circuitry underlying evaluation and choice

    Optimal indolence: a normative microscopic approach to work and leisure

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    Dividing limited time between work and leisure when both have their attractions is a common everyday decision. We provide a normative control theoretic treatment of this decision that bridges economic and psychological accounts. We show how our framework applies to free-operant behavioural experiments in which subjects are required to work (depressing a lever) for sufficient total time (called the price) to receive a reward. When the microscopic benefit-of-leisure increases nonlinearly with duration, the model generates behaviour that qualitatively matches various microfeatures of subjects’ choices, including the distribution of leisure bout durations as a function of the payoff. We relate our model to traditional accounts by deriving macroscopic, molar, quantities from microscopic choices

    What to do, when to do it, how long to do it for: a normative microscopic approach to the labour leisure tradeoff

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    Dividing limited time between work and leisure is a common, everyday choice. Given the option, humans and other animals elect to distribute their time be- tween work and leisure, rather than choosing all of one and none of the other. Traditional accounts of the allocation of time have characterised behaviour on a macroscopic timescale, reporting and studying average times spent in work or leisure. We develop a novel, normative, microscopic framework in which subjects approximately maximise their expected returns by making momentary commit- ments to one or other activity. This generic theoretical framework is applied to the work-leisure tradeo . We determine the microscopic utility of leisure { an animal's innate preference irrespective of all other rewards and costs. We re- port our analyses of data from our collaboration with experimentalists who use brain stimulation reward (electrically stimulating reward circuits in the brain) { a powerful reward that does not satiate unlike food, and is not secondary, unlike money, on rat subjects. We show that in all subjects, this utility of leisure is non- linear. Subjects either prefer long leisure bouts all at one go, or many short ones, but are not indi erent to the division of leisure durations. We also develop new normative, microscopic models of how fatigue and satiation may impact decision- making, and make predictions about their e ect on the temporal distribution of choices. We then derive macroscopic utilities from microscopic ones and show how macro- scopic facets such as imperfect substitutability can arise. We show that by inte- grating our microscopic choices we can build macroscopic characterisations that are not only equivalent to, but richer than those a orded by previous macro- scopic characterisations. We therefore build a superset of traditional macroscopic quanti cations. Our normative, microscopic approach sheds new light on the na- ture of temporally relevant behaviour and may provide a powerful framework for understanding the psychological processes and neural computations underlying real-time cost-bene t decision-making

    Neuroscience and Settlement: An Examination of Scientific Innovations and Practical Applications

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    Published in cooperation with the American Bar Association Section of Dispute Resolutio

    Labour relations in research of socio-economic systems

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    © 2018 International Strategic Management Association. All Rights Reserved. The article is concerned with the study of the theoretical and methodological patterns of the genesis of labour relations during evolution of socio-economic systems. The approach developed by the authors makes it possible to single out the basic blocks of the labour relations system, considering the actors and objects of the relations. Adopted as a basis, such an approach makes it possible to describe the labour relations of any economic system. The allocation of mandatory elements (objects) and subjects in the structure of labour relations makes it possible to disclose the content of the category “labour relations”. The relevance of theoretical studies of the characteristics of the economy at a substantial level, the increased interest in the methodology and theory of economic knowledge is due to the inconsistency and alternativeness of the current stage of development of the world economy and global society. For Russian society, such studies are determined by the exceptional complexity of transformation processes and the prospects for its evolution

    Caltech's Ecoweek

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    Labour relations in research of socio-economic systems

    Get PDF
    The article is concerned with the study of the theoretical and methodological patterns of the genesis of labour relations during evolution of socio-economic systems. The approach developed by the authors makes it possible to single out the basic blocks of the labour relations system, considering the actors and objects of the relations. Adopted as a basis, such an approach makes it possible to describe the labour relations of any economic system. The allocation of mandatory elements (objects) and subjects in the structure of labour relations makes it possible to disclose the content of the category “labour relations”. The relevance of theoretical studies of the characteristics of the economy at a substantial level, the increased interest in the methodology and theory of economic knowledge is due to the inconsistency and alternativeness of the current stage of development of the world economy and global society. For Russian society, such studies are determined by the exceptional complexity of transformation processes and the prospects for its evolution.peer-reviewe
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