[lbo-talk] Economics drivel

[andie nachgeborenen]

It's probably a cognitive psychology effect rather than a social psychology one. Don't assumed that the social context is always the most important. There's a lot of our thinking that is very robust across all known social circumstances, probaly hard-wired in, so that atention to the social context is actually misleading. The endowment effect is probably a very good example of this. Also along these lines: cognitive dissonance and the related phenomenon of sour grapes (adaptive preference formation, or "I do not want what I have not got"), and various other things usefully explored by Jon Elster in his books on the social implications of cognitive spychology, Sour Grapes, Ulysses and the Sirens, and other books jks

Bill Bartlett <billbartlett at enterprize.net.au> wrote:At 6:23 PM -0400 9/6/03, Barkley Rosser wrote:


> I hate to start sounding like a technical economist,
>but indeed, "a bird in hand is worth two in the bush,"
>is not opportunity cost at all, but what is now coming
>to be called the "endowment effect," which itself is a
>discovery of the behavioral economists that goes against
>the grain of standard neoclassical economists. If you
>have something you really do not want to give it up, but
>if you don't have it, then it is not such a big deal. This
>was discovered in contingent valuation studies of the
>environment. People will demand to be paid much more
>for a 10% decline in enviro quality than they are willing to
>pay for a 10% increase in enviro quality.

See, there you go. It is getting way ahead of yourself to measure such a thing and you make no attempt to explain it or put it into any social context. No attempt whatsoever to understand why something happens.


> An average of
>the by now voluminous studies would suggest that the
>ratio is likely to be about 3 to 1, although some have it as
>high as 10 to 1, easily. This violates standard economic
>theory, although not most peoples' common sense.

You're trying to measure something before you know what it is. How futile is that? You can't see the wood for the trees.

Bill Bartlett
Bracknell Tas
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