Conference call for contributions
Paris, December 17th - December 19th 2014
Organized by Mikaël Cozic (UPEC, IUF & IHPST, France)
and Jean-Sébastien Lenfant (U. Lille 1, France)
IMPORTANT DATES:
Notification of interest: June 10th 2014
Deadline for abstract:
July 10th 2014
Notification of acceptance: August 31th 2014
Full paper: December 1st 2014
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:
Erik Angner (George Mason university, USA), Richard Arena
(Université de Nice Sophia-Antipolis), Laurie Bréban (Université Paris 8,
France), Luigino Bruni (Università Lumsa a Roma, Italy), Annie L. Cot
(Université Paris 1, France), Agnès Festré (Université de Picardie Jules Verne,
France), Till Grüne Yanoff (Royal Institute of Technology, KTH, Sweden),
Alessandro Innocenti (Università di Siena, Italy), Ivan Moscati (Insubria
University, Italy), Annika Wallin (Lunds Universitet, Sweden).
CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS:
Philippe MONGIN (CNRS & HEC Paris, France), Floris
HEUKELOM (U. Nijmegen, Netherdlands), Robert SUGDEN (University of
East Anglia, United Kingdom).
CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS
"Psychology is evidently at the basis of political
economy and, in general, of all the social sciences. A day will come when we
will be able to deduce the laws of the social science from the principles of
psychology" (Pareto, Manual of Political Economy, 1909, II, §1)
Neoclassical economics was built upon a theory of
rational behavior that pretended to be independent from psychological
foundations.
Actually, Pareto, who has been instrumental in laying the
foundations of modern utility and rational choice theory, uphold that economics
and psychology needed to develop separately and that the hopes for reconciling
psychology, economics and sociology in the social sciences "still remain
some way off".
Over thirty years or so, an important part of economics
has been oriented towards realizing Pareto's prophecy that a day would come
when economics and psychology would benefit from reconciling each others,
opening the way for a better understanding of individual and collective
behaviors. This reconciliation comes after a period of time during which
economics has developed its tools and principles away from psychology (or so
the standard narrative argues), on the mere assumption that rational behavior
could be described satisfactorily with a well-behaved utility function. For
many economists, the offspring of this collective effort is called
"behavioral economics", and it is sometimes viewed a new paradigm in
economics, providing tools and principles that may be applied to different
fields of economic inquiry (finance, development economics, game theory, etc.).
Basics of behavioral economics are now part of any
curricula in economics. The advent of behavioral economics has often been
associated with a story-telling argument about its early development in the
1970s and its establishment, focusing on three main points: 1) the
legitimization of experimental methods in economics; 2) the usefulness of
concepts and ideas borrowed from psychology to increase the explanatory or
predictive power of the theory of rational behavior; 3) the advent of a renewed
view of human behavior and hence of new ideas in normative economics.
Actually, Pareto's opening quotation reminds us also that
psychology (in different guises) has been a fundamental issue for economists
even since 18th century, if only because economists have usually grounded their
own theory of economics on some ideas about human nature, and especially on
human desires and beliefs.
In recent years, historians of economic thought and
theoreticians have shown an interest in understanding the ins and outs of the
behavioral turn in economics, and more broadly, on the introduction of
psychological elements in economic explanations. Some have focused on recent
history, enhancing the different trends of behavioral economics. Others have
dealt with the nascent of behavioral economics and the early collaboration
between economists and psychologists in the 1950s. Still some others have tried
to understand how the marginalist school of thought had relied on the
experimental psychology of its time--namely psychophysics--and how it had
progressively been expelled out of the realm of economics, at least
temporarily, with Pareto and Fisher. However, those contributions have not been
coordinated and we are far from having a comprehensive overview of the complex
history of the relationships between economics and psychology.
The aim of this conference is to gather contributions
from historians of economics and historians of psychology (including cognitive
sciences), and also from historically-oriented researchers and philosophers of
these disciplines. The overall ambition is to understand the way economics has
dealt with psychological arguments, methods and concepts throughout history and
to highlight the main debates between economists and psychologists that have
fostered and are still fostering behavioral economics. It is hoped that these
will pave the way for an overall vision of the history of the relationships
between economics and psychology and of the methodological transformations of
economics as a discipline.
The organizers wish to limit the number of contributions
so that most of the conference will take place in plenary sessions. Interested
contributors are asked to indicate their interest in participating to the
conference to A COMPLETER. The deadline for submitting an abstract is July 10th
2014. It is hoped that the contributions to the conference will in turn lead to
the publication of a comprehensive reference book with short versions of papers
and to thematic issues in journals.
Below is a non-exhaustive list of topics, authors and
schools of thought:
·
Psychology in economics before the marginalist revolution (Hume, Smith, Condillac, Quesnay)
·
Psychophysics, psychology and the (pre)marginalists (Gossen, Jevons, Walras, Marshall, Edgeworth, Pareto and Fisher,
psychology in the Austrian tradition)
·
Psychologists, economists, and the birth and development of experimental psychology (1850-1950)
·
Psychology in the institutionalist and Keynesian schools of thought (Veblen, Mitchell, J.M Clark, Keynes,
Duesenberry, Post-Keynesian school).
· How
psychologists came to study decision and choice after World War II (Edwards, Davidson, Luce, Suppes, Siegel,
etc).
· The role
and importance of 'mathematical psychology' and of the 'representational theory of measurement'
· Allais's
paradox and other decision paradoxes from the point of view of economics and psychology.
· National
traditions in the development of "economic psychology" (in relation with social psychology) and
early behavioral economics in the USA (Katona, Simon), France, Germany,
England, Italy, etc.
· How psychologists
have been involved in the development of behavioral economics and alternative paradigms to study
economic behavior (e.g. Kahneman, Tversky, Slovic, Gigerenzer)?
· Did
economics borrow concepts and laws from psychology or did they rather borrow methods?
· What has
been the influence of behavioral sciences, marketing and business studies on the development of
behavioral economics?
· What have
been the effects of behavioral economics on public policy? Which role played public policy in the
development of behavioral economics?
· What have
been the after effects of behavioral economics on the representation of utility and welfare? (Pigou,
Boulding, Scitovsky, Easterlin, Happiness economics)
· How has
behavioral economics come into different fields of economics (finance, development economics, health
economics, social choice, public economics, normative economics)?
· The
historical development of neuroeconomics and its links with psychology.
· The role
of normative considerations in the development of behavioral economics, and the links between normative and
behavioral economics.
If you are interested in participating in this
conference, please send a notification of interest mentioning the theme of your
contribution by June 10th 2014 and an abstract of approximately 1000 words
prepared for blind review by July 10th 2014. Send your abstract by email at eco-psycho@rationalite.org with the following information:
Name and surname
Affiliation
Title of your contribution
Abstract
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