Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores how individual actions coordinate to produce unintended social consequences. In the past this phenomenon has been explained as the outcome of rational, self-interested individual behaviour. Professor Bicchieri shows that this is in no way a satisfying explanation.
Trade Review'Game theory has forced social scientists in general and economists in particular to confront the issue of rationality. Until we explore systematically the nature of what we mean by that term we shall make little further progress in the social sciences. The author of this study has made an important contribution by intelligently exploring the issues that must be confronted.' Douglass North, The Journal of Economic Literature
Table of Contents1. Rationality and predictability; 2. Equilibrium; 3. Epistemic rationality; 4. Self-fulfilling theories; 5. Paradoxes of rationality; 6. Learning and norms: the case of cooperation.