Rational Choice and its Limits for the Solution of Social and Legal Problems

2021 ◽  
pp. 37-54
Author(s):  
Simon Deakin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Learning ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Collective Learning ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Third ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
Alternative Approaches

This chapter addresses a number of methodological issues arising from the behavioural turn in law and economics and its claim to have established more realistic foundations for both positive and normative analysis. The first is whether models are necessarily better for being more realistic. Friedman’s proposal that the less realistic a model, the more useful it is as a basis for the identification of hypotheses, is rejected on the grounds that this is liable to direct research down fruitless or even erroneous paths. However, models such as the rationality axiom remain approximations of reality, not revealed truths. This leads on to a consideration of the second issue which is whether behavioural research should lead us to reject the rationality axiom. The claim that human beings are systematically wrong in their decision making is shown to be theoretically unsound and empirically unproven. Rather, theory and empirics alike suggest that rationality has a basis in social learning and institutional framing. The third issue concerns the normative conclusions to be drawn from behavioural law and economics. It is suggested that empirical research does not justify privileging ‘libertarian paternalism’ over alternative approaches to law and regulation. In the era of surveillance capitalism and the panoptic state, it is more than timely to reflect on the merits of collective learning and participatory decision making, democratic practices with adaptive qualities neglected by behavioural law and economics.

The Empirical Research for the Expansion of Chain into the Third and Fourth Tier Cities in Guangdong Province

2012 ◽  
Vol 433-440 ◽  
pp. 1967-1970
Author(s):  
Jun Chen ◽  
De Shan Tang
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Factor Analysis ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Power Index ◽  
Guangdong Province ◽  
County Level ◽  
Scientific Choice ◽  
Retail Chain ◽  
The Third ◽  
Set Up

The Retail Chain Enterprises implement the strategy of channel to sink to set up shops in third and fourth cities. A reasonable and scientific choice of order of priority must be made when the enterprises entering those cities. This article adopts the approach of the Factor Analysis and duster Analysis the analysis 72 cities (including county-level cities) according to purchasing power index, and to explore how Retail Chain Enterprises to make the market of third and fourth their cities in Guangdong province. The conclusion that is the order of decision ——making to enter into the third and fourth tier cities, which has important guiding significance.

From the Autonomy Framework towards Networks and Systems Approaches for ‘Autonomous’ Weapons Systems

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hin-Yan Liu
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Systems Approach ◽  
Legal Compliance ◽  
Legal Doctrine ◽  
Systems Approaches ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
Autonomous Weapons ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Weapons Systems

The legal debate surrounding the development and deployment of autonomous weapons systems (aws) has stagnated in recent years, having arguably hit the hard limits of legal doctrine. At the heart of this impasse lies the focus upon autonomy as both the innovative and defining feature of aws. Thus, the autonomy of the weapons system places it in a legally liminal zone between agent and object, revealing a set of legal problems that revolve around issues of control, influence, responsibility and liability, and questions of legal compliance that follow from the prospect of autonomous lethal decision-making. This paper seeks to explore alternative framings to the same underlying technology as a means of escaping the limits imposed by the autonomy framework that has dominated the debate to date, and to examine the consequences that flow from pursuing these approaches from legal and regulatory perspectives. In particular, emphasis is placed upon the networks approach, and the systems approach, which this paper sets out and differentiates from the orthodox emphasis upon autonomy. These alternative approaches suggest that the legal problems arising from the autonomy framing are the easiest set of issues to address, insofar as these frame legal problems, while the networks and systems approaches seem to touch upon legal mysteries to which no ready legal or regulatory responses can be made. Rather than dismiss the network and systems approaches, however, this paper suggests that appropriate, adequate and robust legal and regulatory responses must consider the insights and challenges that these approaches pose, and that pursuing these approaches will lead to powerful converging arguments supporting a moratorium on the deployment of aws.

Rational Choice and Rational Cognition

Legal Theory ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 183-203
Author(s):  
Jules L. Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Folk Psychology ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Economic Models ◽  
Intentional Action ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Legal Problems

There is a close but largely unexplored connection between law and economics and cognitive psychology. Law and economics applies economic models, modes of analysis, and argument to legal problems. Economic theory can be applied to legal problems for predictive, explanatory, or evaluative purposes. In explaining or assessing human action, economic theory presupposes a largely unarticulated account of rational, intentional action. Philosophers typically analyze intentional action in terms of desires and beliefs. I intend to perform some action because I believe that it will (is likely to) produce an outcome that I desire. This standard “belief-desire” model of action invokes what philosophers of psychology and action theorists aptly refer to as a “folk psychology.”

Rationality and Cognition

Legal Theory ◽  
1997 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-103
Author(s):  
William N. Eskridge
Keyword(s):  
Utility Function ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Patterns Of Behavior ◽  
Institutional Actors

Rational-choice theory is pervasive in legal theorizing. Most law and economics work assumes that human beings make decisions that are rational as to both their ends and means. Decisions are ends-rational if they are directed at goals that satisfy the person's utility function; decisions are means-rational if they adopt methods reasonably connected to achieving those goals. Institutionalist theory assumes that institutions are composed of actors pursuing their own rational ends by rational means and, further, that those institutions themselves can be said to have rational ends pursued by rational means. Most rational-choice theorizing in law is positive: Thinkers are using the theory as a stylized way of describing patterns of behavior or predicting expected behavior. Such theorizing can also be normative: Rationality of ends and means is an aspiration of human and institutional actors, and law can improve upon existing behavior through rules, procedures, and structures.

Ignition

2018 ◽  
pp. 1-42
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Stage ◽  
Lack Of Control ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Wind Vane

Every process of transformation—human, institutional, or community—begins with the stage of consciousness. Can we evolve without being fully aware of what we want to achieve? Of course! However, this implies going as a wind vane, waiting for the wind to indicate the direction to follow, with the respective risks and consequences of lack of control or defocusing. A second step involves making decisions, which implies risk, which generates fear, which ultimately paralyzes the decision-making processes; preparing ourselves consciously for this stage is highly relevant. The third stage, action, involves a lot of discipline; the problem with this is that comfort also paralyzes us as human beings. This is perhaps the biggest challenge to overcome. Transited the previous three, evolution involves two different types of challenges: 1) how to continue adding value to what we have achieved and 2) how to restart the cycle reinventing us again and again. This chapter explores these beginning steps.

Alternative Behavioral Law and Economics

2014 ◽  
pp. 166-192
Author(s):  
Gregory Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Law And Economics ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Judgment And Decision Making ◽  
Actor Model ◽  
Rational Actor ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
Legal Contexts ◽  
Behavioral Law And Economics

This chapter considers the psychological, methodological, and normative paths taken by behavioral law and economics (“BLE”) and alternative paths that BLE might have taken, and might still take. The counterfactual BLE imagined here focuses on performing behavioral analyses of legal problems rather than promoting the heuristics and bias view of judgment and decision-making to compete with law and economics’ rational actor model. This change in focus would give priority to empirical studies in which particular legal institutions and specific legal tasks are simulated or studied in situ rather than to studies of abstract and general judgment and decision-making problems that may provide more theoretical bang but have less clear applied payoff in specific legal contexts.

scholarly journals Municipal management in the south of Russia: managerial tools ensuring efficiency

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (Extra-E) ◽  
pp. 607-613
Author(s):  
Aleksandr V. Dyatlov ◽  
Vitaly V. Kovalev ◽  
Svetlana A. Tikhonovskova ◽  
Elena L. Kharitonova
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Model ◽  
Service Delivery ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Third ◽  
Municipal Management ◽  
Rational Alternative

To establish the potential opportunities to achieve more efficiency of municipal management in the theory and practice of using the tools of state managerialism. This article uses rational choice theory, which is based on the idea of three forms of capital: physical, human and social. These forms are transformed into a set of resources used by the actor to achieve the goal in the process of choosing the most rational alternative. There was the research and presentation of its results on the third empirical indicator. The empirical research was carried out for the practical use of the developed theoretical model. Substantively this research will focus on such aspects of the activities of self-governments as work for indicators, management in the form of service delivery, restructuring of government bodies, effectiveness of interaction with civic activists and business communities.

scholarly journals Institutionalisation and implementation of the selected participatory instruments. The case of Poland

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (57) ◽  
pp. 113-134
Author(s):  
Anna Kołomycew
Keyword(s):  
Civic Engagement ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
New Institutionalism ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Final Part ◽  
The Third ◽  
Rational Choice Institutionalism ◽  
Depth Interviews

The article traces the process of the institutionalisation of selected elements of the mechanisms of public participation, whose consequence was the unification of the rules of implementation and formalisation. The process, however, did not result in an increase in civic engagement on the part of the citizens of all the territorial units under consideration. The article presents the outcome of both quantitative and qualitative (in-depth interviews) research conducted by the author in Polish municipalities. The theoretical framework of the article is provided by ‘new institutionalism’, and especially by ‘rational choice institutionalism’. The structure of the article is as follows: the first part focuses on the principles of new institutionalism with reference to the mechanisms of public participation. The second part presents a succinct analysis of the step-by-step institutionalisation of selected participatory mechanisms that have ensued in recent years. The third part contains a methodological overview of empirical research, while the fourth, and final, part includes the outcome of the research and its interpretation.

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