Empirically grounded economic reason

Throughout Herbert Simon's wide-ranging career - in public administration, business administration, economics, cognitive psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, and computer science - his central aim has been to explain the nature of the thought processes that people use in making decisions.

The third volume of Simon's collected papers continues this theme, bringing together work on this and other economics-related topics that have occupied his attention in the 1980s and 1990s: how to represent causal ordering formally in dynamic systems, the implications for society of new electronic information systems, employee and managerial motivation in the business firm (specifically the implications for economics of the propensity of human beings to identify with the goals of organizations), and the state of economics itself.

Offering alternative models based on such concepts as satisficing (acceptance of viable choices that may not be the undiscoverable optimum) and bouded rationality (the limited extent to which rational calculation can direct human behaviour), Simon shows why more empirical research based on experiments and direct observation, rather than just statistical analysis of economic aggregates, is needed.

The 27 articles, in five sections, each with an introduction by the author, examine the modelling of economic systems, technological change: information technology, motivation and the theory of the firm, and behavioural economics and bounded rationality.

Part 1 The structure of complex systems: Causal ordering -- causality in economic models; causal ordering, comparative statics, and near decomposability, (with Y. Iwasaki); causality and model abstraction, (with Y. Iwasaki); simulating large systems -- simulation of large-scale systems by aggregation; prediction and prescription in systems modelling. Part 2 The advance of information technology: the rural-urban population balance again; the impact of electronic communications on organizations; the steam engine and the computer -- what makes technology revolutionary; managing in an information-rich world; on the alienation of workers and management. Part 3 Motivation and the theory of the firm: a mechanism for social selection and successful altruism; organizations and markets; altruism and economics -- a summary statement; altruism and economics -- social implications. Part 4 Behaviourial economics and bounded rationality: behaviourial economics -- preface to "Handbook of behaviourial economics"; behaviourial economics; bounded rationality; satisfying; empirical methods in economics -- behaviourial research -- theory and public policy; methodological foundations of economics; pref…