The Irrelevance of Economic Assumptions
The main attack on neoclassical economics comes from behavioral economics. Leaders in this field, notably, Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, have found from experiments that people do not conform to the precepts of rational choice theory. While the behaviorists are therefore damaging to the optimism of Stigler and Wittman, they are at the same time—and ironically—conclusive as to the importance of the rational choice model. I will explain why later.
There have been other criticisms to the rational choice model, one of which questions whether there is such a thing as the individual who thinks rationally. John B. Davis writes of the postmodernist critique, which undermines the self “as a self-subsistent ...
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