Bernard Walliser - Böcker

In this book, cognitive economics is understood either in a broad sense as the influence exerted by some achievements of cognitive science on economics, or in a more restricted sense as the study of mental and adaptation processes implemented by economic agents in their interactions. In response to some critics addressed to the rationality and equilibrium principles in classical economics, cognitive economics associates an epistemic program grounded on individual beliefs and reasoning and an evolutionist program concerned with learning processes in a social context. The book, which is the result of the first Conference about Cognitive Economics held in Europe, gives an overview of various recent achievements of cognitive economics and is intended to better define its motivations and its boundaries. The proposed articles deal with the individual deliberation process of a single decision-maker, the conjoint learning process of several players in a game, the coordination of heterogenous economic agents through beliefs as well as with applications to entrepreneurial behavior, consumer interactions or knowledge economics. These articles also illustrate the different tools and methods which are currently used in the domain and enlarge those traditionally used in economics, from analytical work to model simulations, from conceptual work to laboratory experiments. "Contributions to Economic Analysis" was established in 1952. The series purpose is to stimulate the international exchange of scientific information. The series includes books from all areas of macroeconomics and microeconomics.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the major key concepts common to economics and evolutionary biology.

This book offers a comprehensive exploration of the major key concepts common to economics and evolutionary biology.

Classical microeconomics is intended to explain how a price system is able to coordinate the economic agents. But even if it can be extended to incomplete information and externalities, it remains grounded on very heroic assumptions. Agents are endowed with a very strong rationality, equilibrium is stated without a concrete process to achieve it, market is the unique institution considered. Evolutionary microeconomics is aimed at bypassing these limitations by considering a dynamic approach, however not biologically oriented. Agents have local information and bounded rationality, they are involved in explicit processes of interactions through time, various institutions sustain the market or substitute to it. It explains then some phenomena hardly explained by classical microeconomics: dispersion of prices, variety of industrial structures, financial bubbles.

As a manifestation of a 'cognitive turn' observable in all social sciences, Cognitive Economics is concerned with the beliefs and mental operations held by actors placed within a dynamical and strategic environment. It appears as a synthesis of an educative research program, dealing with crossed expectations of actors, and an evolutionist research program on collective learning processes.The book mainly aims at extending the framework of game theory in order to better fit the results of rapidly increasing laboratory experiments concerned with individual choices and collective interactions. It also seeks to better explain some original economic phenomena involving boundedly rational agents in an institutional setting such as financial bubbles, job search or technological innovation.Written in an informal way, the book is addressed to philosophers or cognitive scientists curious of how economics deal with cognition, as well as graduate students in economics eager to discover how economic science evolves.

Classical microeconomics is intended to explain how a price system is able to coordinate the economic agents. It explains then some phenomena hardly explained by classical microeconomics: dispersion of prices, variety of industrial structures, financial bubbles.