En diversos posts me he dedicado a ofrecer a estudiantes y público interesado información sobre los desarrollos y aplicaciones de la economía en áreas no tan conocidas mostrando el amplio campo de acción que tienen los economistas. En esta ocasión retomo un tema que comente en esta liga y que en lo personal me parece facinante, y es el de la vinculación de la economía con la neurociencia, esto es, Neuroeconomía. En este breve artículo, Neuroeconomic theory: Using neuroscience to understand the bounds of rationality presentan una explicación sencilla sobre esta área de estudio relativamente reciente y ofrece referencias bibliográficas. Reproduzco algunas ideas:
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People often fail to make “rational” decisions. Economic agents are subject to multiple biases that affect the way they perceive events, act upon them, and learn from experience. Most of these anomalies are remarkably persistent and are widely documented in real world and laboratory environments by behavioural data....These behaviours cannot be ignored since they may have disastrous consequences for the economy – as we have recently witnessed during the subprime mortgage crisis. Knowing what type of mistakes and biases are prevalent is an important starting point. The main challenge, however, is to understand why they emerge, so that they can be predicted and, possibly, avoided....Economics has always relied on a careful modelling of decision-makers. They are described by utility functions that represent their goals, and they interact at (Nash) equilibrium. Nevertheless, the discrepancies between theoretical predictions and observed behaviour have haunted the field for many decades. ..To cope with this mismatch, behavioural economists have developed new theories of decision-making that are a better fit for the behavioural data than traditional models. The methodology consists in building models to demonstrate the relationship between a cause (such as a preference for a particular object) and a behavioural anomaly. This line of research formulates possible explanations for behavioural data, but it is nevertheless subject to shortcomings. Often the cause is not observable, and there is no evidence of the relationship provided by the model. Most notably, the freedom provided by the introspection method leads to a model selection problem. Also, the cause of the behavioural anomaly may simply lie elsewhere...Neuroeconomics offers a solution through an additional set of data obtained via a series of measurements of brain activity at the time of decisions. Experimental neuroeconomics can be seen as a subfield of experimental economics, where behavioural data is enriched with brain data. Neuroeconomic theory proposes to build brain-based models capable of predicting observed behaviour.
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People often fail to make “rational” decisions. Economic agents are subject to multiple biases that affect the way they perceive events, act upon them, and learn from experience. Most of these anomalies are remarkably persistent and are widely documented in real world and laboratory environments by behavioural data....These behaviours cannot be ignored since they may have disastrous consequences for the economy – as we have recently witnessed during the subprime mortgage crisis. Knowing what type of mistakes and biases are prevalent is an important starting point. The main challenge, however, is to understand why they emerge, so that they can be predicted and, possibly, avoided....Economics has always relied on a careful modelling of decision-makers. They are described by utility functions that represent their goals, and they interact at (Nash) equilibrium. Nevertheless, the discrepancies between theoretical predictions and observed behaviour have haunted the field for many decades. ..To cope with this mismatch, behavioural economists have developed new theories of decision-making that are a better fit for the behavioural data than traditional models. The methodology consists in building models to demonstrate the relationship between a cause (such as a preference for a particular object) and a behavioural anomaly. This line of research formulates possible explanations for behavioural data, but it is nevertheless subject to shortcomings. Often the cause is not observable, and there is no evidence of the relationship provided by the model. Most notably, the freedom provided by the introspection method leads to a model selection problem. Also, the cause of the behavioural anomaly may simply lie elsewhere...Neuroeconomics offers a solution through an additional set of data obtained via a series of measurements of brain activity at the time of decisions. Experimental neuroeconomics can be seen as a subfield of experimental economics, where behavioural data is enriched with brain data. Neuroeconomic theory proposes to build brain-based models capable of predicting observed behaviour.
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A propósito del uso de la economía en otras áreas, la teoría del "Rational Choice (RC)" emana de esta ciencia. El RC se usa en la ciencia política y en las relaciones internacionales para poder predecir el comportamiento de los actores en la arena política nacional y/o internacional. Marianna Lara
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