Description
Book SynopsisHerbert Simon (1916-2001) is mostly celebrated for the theory of bounded rationality and satisficing. This book of essays on Models of Simon tackles these topics that the he broached in a professional career spanning more than 60 years. Expository material on the fundamental concepts he introduced are re-interpreted in terms of the theory of computability.
This volume frames the behavioural issues of concern for economists, such as: hierarchy, causality, near-diagonal linear dynamical systems, discovery, the contrasts between the notion of heuristics, and the Church-Turing Thesis of Computability Theory. There is, consistently, an emphasis on the historical origins of the concepts Simon worked with, in emphasising Human Problem Solving and Decision Making â by rational individuals and institutions (like Organizations). The main feature of the results in the book are its emphasis on the procedural aspects of human problem solving, decision making and t
Table of Contents
1. Introduction, 2. Herbert Simon: a life, 3. Classical - or Cognitive - Behavioural Economics (CBE) versus Modern Behavioural Economics (MBE), 4. The zeitgeist: cybernetics, servomechanisms, information, communication and computation, 5. Heuristics versus algorithms, 6. Computable and computational complexity theoretic bases for cognitive behavioural economics, 7. Notes on hierarchic, near-decomposable, causal, evolutionary dynamics: The Architecture of Complexity, 8. Gandy's Mechanisms Modelling the Rationality of Organizations by March & Simon, 9. Towards a Classical Behavioural Finance Theory, 10. Intuitionistic foundations for economic theory: a Brouwer-Simon research programme, 11. A crooked path along The Gravel Walks. Appendices. Index
