Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Histories and Critical Traditions
- Part II Contemporary Critical Perspectives
- Part III Interdisciplinary Exchanges
- Chapter 15 The Keynesian Theory of Jamesonian Utopia: Interdisciplinarity in Economics
- Chapter 16 Reading beyond Behavioral Economics
- Chapter 17 Fictional Expectations and Imagination in Economics
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Chapter 16 - Reading beyond Behavioral Economics
from Part III - Interdisciplinary Exchanges
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2022
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics
- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Histories and Critical Traditions
- Part II Contemporary Critical Perspectives
- Part III Interdisciplinary Exchanges
- Chapter 15 The Keynesian Theory of Jamesonian Utopia: Interdisciplinarity in Economics
- Chapter 16 Reading beyond Behavioral Economics
- Chapter 17 Fictional Expectations and Imagination in Economics
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions To …
Summary
The hubris of economists is astonishing. While they regularly look to other disciplines for topics of study, they all too rarely engage seriously with those fields. Building on the arguments in our book Cents and Sensibility: What Economics Can Learn from the Humanities (2017), we contend that while economics is more important than ever, its glaring deficiencies are unnecessary. Most strikingly, even behavioral economists usually neglect culture, have a simplistic and unrealistic depiction of human behavior, and assume away genuine irrationalities. We offer an alternative: an economics that not only learns from literature, philosophy, and the other humanities, but also from history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, and political science. Embracing those fields could lead economists to develop more realistic models of human behavior, recognize that they should not be so confident about their predictions, and produce more effective and just policies.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics , pp. 262 - 276Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022