RISK PERCEPTION IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ECONOMICS
RISK PERCEPTION IN PSYCHOLOGY AND ECONOMICS
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DOI：
10.1111/j.1465-7295.1982.tb01138.x
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发表时间：
1982-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
1.8
通讯作者：
ARROW, KJ
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
ARROW, KJ
理性的概念一直是大多数经济分析的基础。其内容经过几代人的不断完善。当应用于确定性的静态世界时，它被证明是一个薄弱的假设，不容易被反驳，因此作为一种解释不是很有用，尽管不是字面上的同义反复。但近几十年来，我们看到了更强大的版本的发展，适用于一个真实存在时间和不确定性的世界。其中最重要的表现是，随着时间的推移，分配的一致性标准，不确定性下行为的预期效用假设，以及可以被称为学习的贝叶斯假设，即在新信息的基础上，一致地使用条件概率来改变信念。这些假设已被广泛用于解释经验观察到的行为，尽管在经济学中并不罕见，理论发展比实证实施要远得多。这些假设也越来越多地用于规范分析，作为利益-成本研究的一个组成部分（因此经常被称为利益-风险研究）。例如，通过假设职业选择是通过比较工资差异和死亡率差异来进行的，从而研究了降低疾病死亡率的价值（Thaler和Rosen（1976年），Viscusi（1979年））。几乎从理性假设被用于经济学的那一天起，它们就因经验谬误而受到攻击。很久以前，托斯坦·凡勃伦（Thorstein Veblen）就曾有过一些精心挑选的讽刺段落，讽刺经济学家在日常经济生活中认为普通人具有非凡的计算能力。最近，赫伯特·西蒙（Herbert Simon）和他的同事们提出了很多证据，证明即使在相当简单的情况下，人类也很难做出理性的选择（有关调查，见西蒙（1979））。
The concept of rationality has been basic to most economic analysis. Its content has been successively refined over the generations. As applied to the static world of certainty, it has turned out to be a weak hypothesis, not easily refuted and therefore not very useful as an explanation, though not literally a tautology. But recent decades have seen the development of stronger versions applied to a world in which time and uncertainty are real. Among its most important manifestations have been criteria for con-sistency in allocation over time, the expected-utility hypothesis of behav-ior under uncertainty, and what may be termed the Bayesian hypothesis for learning, that is the consistent use of conditional probabilities for changing beliefs on the basis of new information. These hypotheses have been used widely in offering explanations of empirically-observed behav-ior, though, as not infrequently in economics, the theoretical development has gone much further than the empirical implementation. These hypotheses have also been used increasingly in normative analysis, as a component of benefit-cost studies (therefore frequently referred to as benefit-risk studies). The value of reducing mortality rates from diseases, for example, has been studied by assuming that choice of occupations is made inter alia by comparing wage differences with mortality differences (Thaler and Rosen (1976), Viscusi (1979)).Hypotheses of rationality have been under attack for empirical falsity almost as longas they have been employed in economics. Thorstein Veblen long ago had some choice sarcastic passages about the extraordinary calculating abilities imputed to the average individual in his or her daily eco-nomic life by economists. More recently, Herbert Simon and his colleagues have produced much evidence of the difficulties of human beings in arriving at rational choices even in rather simple contexts (for a survey, see Simon (1979)).