The Explanatory Potential of Artificial Societies

It is often claimed that artificial society simulations contribute to the explanation of social phenomena. At the hand of a particular example, this paper argues that artificial societies often cannot provide full explanations, because their models are not or cannot be validated. Instead, artificial societies may sometimes provide potential explanations. It is shown that these potential explanations, if they contribute to our understanding, considerably differ from the standard kind of potential causal explanations. Instead of possible causal histories, simulations offer possible functional analyses of the explanandum. The paper discusses how these two kinds of potential explanations differ, and how possible functional analyses can be appraised

How-possibly explanations in economics: anything goes?

The recent literature on economic models has rejected the traditional requirement that their epistemic value necessary depended on them offering actual explanations of phenomena. Contributors to that literature have argued that many models do not aim at providing how-actually explanations, but instead how-possibly explanations. However, how to assess the epistemic value of HPEs remains an open question. We present a programmatic approach to answering it. We first introduce a conceptual framework that distinguishes how-actually explanations from how-possibly explanations and that further differentiates between epistemic and objective how-possibly explanations. Secondly, we show how that framework can be used for methodological appraisal as well as for understanding methodological controversies

Toward a framework for selecting behavioural policies: How to choose between boosts and nudges

Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.In this paper, we analyse the difference between two types of behavioural policies – nudges and boosts. We distinguish them on the basis of the mechanisms through which they are expected to operate and identify the contextual conditions that are necessary for each policy to be successful. Our framework helps judging which type of policy is more likely to bring about the intended behavioural outcome in a given situation

It's time we put agency into Behavioural Public Policy

Promoting agency - people's ability to form intentions and to act on them freely - must become a primary objective for Behavioural Public Policy (BPP). Contemporary BPPs do not directly pursue this objective, which is problematic for many reasons. From an ethical perspective, goals like personal autonomy and individual freedom cannot be realised without nurturing citizens' agency. From an efficacy standpoint, BPPs that override agency - for example, by activating automatic psychological processes - leave citizens 'in the dark', incapable of internalising and owning the process of behaviour change. This may contribute to non-persistent treatment effects, compensatory negative spillovers or psychological reactance and backfiring effects. In this paper, we argue agency-enhancing BPPs can alleviate these ethical and efficacy limitations to longer-lasting and meaningful behaviour change. We set out philosophical arguments to help us understand and conceptualise agency. Then, we review three alternative agency-enhancing behavioural frameworks: (1) boosts to enhance people's competences to make better decisions; (2) debiasing to encourage people to reduce the tendency for automatic, impulsive responses; and (3) nudge+ to enable citizens to think alongside nudges and evaluate them transparently. Using a multi-dimensional framework, we highlight differences in their workings, which offer comparative insights and complementarities in their use. We discuss limitations of agency-enhancing BPPs and map out future research directions

Why the Realist-Instrumentalist Debate about Rational Choice Rests on a Mistake

Within the social sciences, much controversy exists about which status should be ascribed to the rationality assumption that forms the core of rational choice theories. Whilst realists argue that the rationality assumption is an empirical claim which describes real processes that cause individual action, instrumentalists maintain that it amounts to nothing more than an analytically set axiom or ‘as if’ hypothesis which helps in the generation of accurate predictions. In this paper, I argue that this realist-instrumentalist debate about rational choice theory can be overcome once it is realised that the rationality assumption is neither an empirical description nor an ‘as if’ hypothesis, but a normative claim

Why is Behavioral Game a Game for Economists? : The concept of beliefs in equilibrium

The interdisciplinary exchange between economists and psychologists has so far been more active and fruitful in the modifications of Expected Utility Theory than in those of Game Theory. We argue that this asymmetry may be explained by economists' specific way of doing equilibrium analysis of aggregate-level outcomes in their practice, and by psychologists' reluctance to fully engage with such practice. We focus on the notion of belief that is embedded in economists' practice of equilibrium analysis, more specifically Nash equilibrium, and argue that its difference from the psychological counterpart is one of the factors that makes interdisciplinary exchange in behavioral game theory more difficult.Peer reviewe

Nudging or Fudging: The World Development Report 2015

The 2015 World Development Report, Mind Society and Behaviour (World Bank, 2015), seeks a redesign of development policy on the basis of insights emerging from behavioural economics. This paper offers a critical assessment of the Report across four dimensions. First, it situates the Report within the broader and evolving knowledge role of the Bank. Second, the paper locates the Report in the context of the evolution of economics as a discipline and how this informs the evolution of the Bank’s development economics. Third, the Report is critically assessed for its narrow take on behavioural economics itself. Finally, the practical significance of the promotion of behavioural economics is considered through reference to its use in interventions in health in general and in response to HIV/AIDS in particular. It is argued that the Report suggests a dramatic and flawed reduction of what development is about, in that it foregoes any analysis of the structural problems facing developing countries and fails to propose major reforms to tackle these