Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty

Zusatztext Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a well-organized and pleasantly written account of the history of economics seen through the lens of individual decision making, ranging from expected utility to prospect theory. It will be of interest to a lay audience and curious students alike. Informationen zum Autor George G. Szpiro is an award-winning author and journalist. A longtime correspondent for the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, his many books include Numbers Rule: The Vexing Mathematics of Democracy, from Plato to the Present (2010) and Pricing the Future: Finance, Physics, and the 300-Year Journey to the Black-Scholes Equation (2011). Klappentext In Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty, George G. Szpiro offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. Szpiro examines economics from the early days of theories spun from anecdotal evidence to the rise of a discipline built around elegant mathematics through the past half century's interest in describing how people actually behave. Considering the work of Locke, Bentham, Jevons, Walras, Friedman, Tversky and Kahneman, Thaler, and a range of other thinkers, he sheds light on the vast scope of discovery since Bernoulli first proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox. Presenting fundamental mathematical theories in easy-to-understand language, Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a revelatory history for readers seeking to grasp the grand sweep of economic thought. Zusammenfassung At its core, economics is about making decisions. In the history of economic thought, great intellectual prowess has been exerted toward devising exquisite theories of optimal decision making in situations of constraint, risk, and scarcity. Yet not all of our choices are purely logical, and so there is a longstanding tension between those emphasizing the rational and irrational sides of human behavior. One strand develops formal models of rational utility maximizing while the other draws on what behavioral science has shown about our tendency to act irrationally. In Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty, George G. Szpiro offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. Szpiro examines economics from the early days of theories spun from anecdotal evidence to the rise of a discipline built around elegant mathematics through the past half centuryâ™s interest in describing how people actually behave. Considering the work of Locke, Bentham, Jevons, Walras, Friedman, Tversky and Kahneman, Thaler, and a range of other thinkers, he sheds light on the vast scope of discovery since Bernoulli first proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox. Presenting fundamental mathematical theories in easy-to-understand language, Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a revelatory history for readers seeking to grasp the grand sweep of economic thought. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction Part I. Happiness and the Utility of Wealth 1. It All Began with A Paradox 2. More Is Better . . . 3. . . . at a Decreasing Rate Part II. Mathematics Is the Queen of the Sciences . . . 4. The Marginalist Triumvirate 5. Forgotten Precursors 6. Betting on Oneâ™s Belief 7. Games Economists Play 8. Wobbly Curves 9. Comparing the Incomparable Part III. . . . But Man Is the Measure of All Things 10. More Paradoxes 11. Good Enough 12. Sunk Costs, the Gamblerâ™s Fallacy, and Other Errors 13. Erroneous, Irrational, or Plain Dumb? Notes Bibliography Index ...

Highly recommended.

Autorentext
George Szpiro (Ph.D., mathematical economics and finance, Hebrew University) has for the past thirty years worked as correspondent of the Swiss daily Neue Zürcher Zeitung, which has a readership of 500k. He is the author of Kepler's Conjecture (John Wiley, 2003), Numbers Rule (Princeton University Press, 2010) and Pricing the Future (Basic Books 2011), among others.

Klappentext

In Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty, George G. Szpiro offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. Szpiro examines economics from the early days of theories spun from anecdotal evidence to the rise of a discipline built around elegant mathematics through the past half century's interest in describing how people actually behave. Considering the work of Locke, Bentham, Jevons, Walras, Friedman, Tversky and Kahneman, Thaler, and a range of other thinkers, he sheds light on the vast scope of discovery since Bernoulli first proposed a solution to the St. Petersburg Paradox. Presenting fundamental mathematical theories in easy-to-understand language, Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty is a revelatory history for readers seeking to grasp the grand sweep of economic thought.

Zusammenfassung
Risk, Choice, and Uncertainty offers a new narrative of the three-century history of the study of decision making, tracing how crucial ideas have evolved and telling the stories of the thinkers who shaped the field. George G. Szpiro examines economics from theories of optimal decision making to behavioral science.

Inhalt
Introduction
Part I. Happiness and the Utility of Wealth

1. It All Began with A Paradox
2. More Is Better . . .
3. . . . at a Decreasing Rate
   Part II. Mathematics Is the Queen of the Sciences . . .
4. The Marginalist Triumvirate
5. Forgotten Precursors
6. Betting on One's Belief
7. Games Economists Play
8. Wobbly Curves
9. Comparing the Incomparable
   Part III. . . . But Man Is the Measure of All Things
10. More Paradoxes
11. Good Enough
12. Sunk Costs, the Gambler's Fallacy, and Other Errors
13. Erroneous, Irrational, or Plain Dumb?
    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index