Three new areas of investigation by economists are reviewed which involve interdisciplinary work with other social scientists: extending economic theory to noneconomic problems, taking into account the effect of human nature in human decision making, and exploring the impact of economic variables on noneconomic behavior. It is pointed out that this latter area has been neglected by economists and that economics ought to include the impact of the economy on society as part of its domain.

New directions for economics

http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-322-89161-7_7.pdf

Intuition und Emotion in der Entscheidungsforschung — State-of-the-Art und aktuelle Forschungsrichtungen

Human realities are formed in particular contexts, and can be understood through telling the story of experiences related with these realities. Homelessness is a reality for many in various parts of the world. The condition of homelessness involves various discourses, each of which can be dominant in different people. Dominant discourses bring with them inherent understandings which in the case of the reality of homelessness can negatively influence the daily activities and future prospects of homeless people. These dominant discourses define the experiences of the homeless people and cause them to assess themselves negatively. This study is in the field of Practical Theology, based on a social constructionist paradigm which holds that meanings are socially constructed and there is no single “Truth”. The processes of telling stories, listening to these stories and constructing new meanings make up a narrative approach to counselling, which I use in the context of interactions with homeless youth at the Street Centre run by Pretoria Community Ministries. My approach is qualitative, and the data are evolved from narrative interventions and unstructured interviews with homeless youth. As this process is a journey into the experiences and stories of these young people, empirical sampling is irrelevant. Listening to the stories of the young people from the streets filled me with enthusiasm to take this narrative journey with them through their stories. Examining the impact of economic factors in their discourses and narrations gave me new understanding of their meanings and challenged me, because many of these were unpredictable. The epistemological approach of postfoundationalism used on this journey allowed a wide range of knowledge types and interactions, which I elucidate through interdisciplinary investigation and identification of the traditions that inform the dominant discourses. The seven-movement methodology used for this work is relevant in the context of the homeless youth, because it allows me as researcher to continue the full length of the journey with the homeless youth, leading eventually to new possibilities. On the way certain themes evolved and their meanings constructed. Listening for the discourses and identifying their economic factors helped me to deconstruct these discourses, and so guide the stories into more hopeful channels. Of course, constructing alternate stories and acknowledging the importance of economic factors will not alone change the future of these young homeless people. Economic restructuring of society is needed. This possibility challenges jobless, homeless individuals not to acquiesce in the negative patterns of society, but rather to work with conviction to create new possibilities. In this project I listened to the stories of ten homeless young people, for each of which two sessions are presented in this report. These stories show that the story tellers are the real researchers, who create new alternate stories of hope in the course of this project. “God-talk” and the discussion of “God-experiences” throws light on the role of God in their lives and in their stories. The research journey charted in this report describes first the theological context and research model, and then the particular context of these young people’s lives. This is followed by descriptions of the discourses. Description of the context of the stories and interpretation of the stories themselves moves into assessment of the stories in their individual context. Interdisciplinary investigation and identification of the traditions that inform the discourses thicken our understanding of the realities experienced by these young people, and deeper interpretations arise which are applicable beyond the local context. Each petal of this flower blooms with new colours of understanding and new fragrances of possibility. The findings of this project are not the final end of this journey, but rather lights for future journeys into the experiences of homeless youth. KEY TERMS 1. Homelessness 2. Social constructionism 3. Post-modernity 4. Narrative approach 5. Postfoundationalism 6. Interdisciplinarity 7. Dominant discourses 8. God-talk 9. Economic realities

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A narrative journey with the homeless youth discovering the impact of economic factors in their discourses of homelessness

Economics and psychology: Estranged bedfellows or fellow travellers? A critical synthesis

are distinct concepts which fall together rather elegantly in Savage's (1954) account of subjective expected utility theory (SEU). Even in the presence of complete uncertainty, a decision-maker's beliefs can be given a (subjective) probability description if certain axioms are satisfied. Those axioms are canons of rationality so situations of uncertainty can be treated as choice under risk via the subjective probabilities for all rational agents. Despite the substance of the mathematical theory which Savage uses to make this case, it is becoming increasingly clear that SEU can be questioned on normative grounds (Allais (1953), Hansson (1975), Tversky (1975), McClennen (1982, 1986), Sen (1985), Bausor (1985), Anand (1987), Schick (1987), Bar-Hillel and Margalit (1988), LaValle (1989), Machina (1989)) and increasingly researchers are returning to the notion of uncertainty (Maskin (1979), Fishburn (1983a), Heiner (1983), Hey (1983), Cross (1983), Cohen and Jaffray (1985), Gilboa (1986), Bewley (1986), Kelsey (1986), Einhorn and Hogarth (1986), Gilboa and Schmeidler (1989) and Schmeidler (1989)). In addition, the explosion of non-expected utility results in mathematical decision theory and laboratory experiments (Machina 1983), together with the growth of generalised equilibrium and consumer theories (e.g. Mas-Collel (1974), Shafer (1975) and Kim and Richter (1986)) make the rationality of SEU an issue of interest to proposers of non-SEU theory. Hitherto, there has been a tendency to treat challenges to conventional wisdom on rationality and uncertainty issues separately. This paper attempts to respond to Savage's confounding of the issues by offering an analysis of rationality and subjectivism which addresses both areas simultaneously. In section 2, a two-dimensional model of credence is proposed in which sensitivity to what Keynes (1921) called the weight of evidence leads to behaviour which is not describable within SEU. It is argued that the idea of an epistemic measure is not intuitively unappealing and in section 3, a theory of rational choosing (considerably more 'hands off" than those in current circulation) is proposed.

RATIONALITY and uncertainty are concepts central to economic theorising. They

We cannot understand society without understanding people. The ways in which humans behave, including their adjustments to each other and to their communities, contribute to the complex interactions from which all activity arises. Attempts to think coherently about economic phenomena must incorporate, at least implicitly, some image of human motivation and epistemics, and of the skills by which accommodation between people is achieved. Only then can one gain insight into the individual’s emergence as a socially integrated creature responding to, and attempting to influence, events.

Randall Bausor

Papers

Human Adaptability and Economic Surprise