The Fall 2011 issue of this journal published a
two-paper section on “Neuroeconomics.” One
paper, by Ernst Fehr and Antonio Rangel, clearly
and concisely summarized a small part of the fast-growing
literature. The second paper, “It’s about
Space, It’s about Time, Neuroeconomics, and the
Brain Sublime,” by Marieke van Rooij and Guy Van
Orden, is beautifully written and enjoyable to read,
but misleading in many critical ways. A number
of economists and neuroscientists working at the
intersection of the two fields shared our reaction
and have signed this letter, as shown below. Some of
the paper’s descriptions of empirical findings and
methods in neuroeconomics are incomplete, badly
out of date, or flatly wrong. In studies the authors
describe in detail, their skeptical interpretations
have often been refuted by published data, old and
new, that they overlook
