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- News (10)
- Research (132)
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- January 2014 (Revised November 2015)
- Background Note
Rational Choice and Managerial Decision-Making
By: Willy Shih
This note discusses Herbert Simon's notion of bounded rationality: how managers may sometimes make suboptimal choices because of their limited ability to access or process information. View Details
Keywords: Rational Choice; Bounded Rationality; Satisficing; Herbert Simon; Agenda-setting; Choice; Alternatives; Decision Making; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decisions; Judgments
Shih, Willy. "Rational Choice and Managerial Decision-Making." Harvard Business School Background Note 614-048, January 2014. (Revised November 2015.)
- Research Summary
Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement
By: Jerry R. Green
For the past century, economists have used the hypothesis that individual choice is based on rationality in their calculations of individual and collective welfare. The central ideas are that actual market choice reveal underlying preferences, and with a good set of... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement
By: Jerry R. Green and Daniel A. Hojman
We present a method for evaluating the welfare of a decision maker, based on observed choice data. Unlike the standard economic theory of revealed preference, our method can be used whether or not the observed choices are rational. Paralleling the standard theory we... View Details
Green, Jerry R., and Daniel A. Hojman. "Choice, Rationality and Welfare Measurement." HKS Faculty Research Working Paper Series, No. 2144, November 2007.
- September 2004
- Article
Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)
Rational agents with differing priors tend to be overoptimistic about their chances of success. In particular, an agent who tries to choose the action that is most likely to succeed, is more likely to choose an action of which he overestimated, rather than... View Details
Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Decision Choices and Conditions; Performance Expectations; Outcome or Result; Opportunities; Risk and Uncertainty; Failure; Success; Management Analysis, Tools, and Techniques; Personal Characteristics; Values and Beliefs; Ethics
Van den Steen, Eric J. "Rational Overoptimism (and Other Biases)." American Economic Review 94, no. 4 (September 2004): 1141–1151.
- Research Summary
Social Choice and Voting Rules
By: Jerry R. Green
This research program is based on the idea that good voting systems should take into account the frequency with which different choice problems arise. Traditional social choice theory requires properties over a fixed domain of choice problems but does not offer the... View Details
- 06 Jul 2015
- News
The Myth of Rational Decision Making
- May 2011
- Article
Overconfidence by Bayesian Rational Agents
This paper derives two mechanisms through which Bayesian-rational individuals with differing priors will tend to be relatively overconfident about their estimates and predictions, in the sense of overestimating the precision of these estimates. The intuition behind one... View Details
Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Forecasting and Prediction; Knowledge Acquisition; Risk Management; Prejudice and Bias
Van den Steen, Eric J. "Overconfidence by Bayesian Rational Agents." Management Science 57, no. 5 (May 2011): 884–896.
- 2008
- Chapter
I Read Playboy for the Articles: Justifying and Rationalizing Questionable Preferences
By: Zoe Chance and Michael I. Norton
When people behave in ways that might appear selfish, prejudiced or perverted, they engage in a host of strategies designed to justify questionable behavior with rational excuses: “I hired my son because he's more qualified”; “I promoted Ashley because she does a... View Details
- 2011
- Article
A Choice Prediction Competition for Social Preferences in Simple Extensive Form Games: An Introduction
By: Eyal Ert, Ido Erev and Alvin E. Roth
Two independent, but related, choice prediction competitions are organized that focus on behavior in simple two-person extensive form games: one focuses on predicting the choices of the first mover and the other on predicting the choices of the second mover. The... View Details
Keywords: Forecasting and Prediction; Behavior; Decision Choices and Conditions; Competition; Motivation and Incentives; Game Theory; Fairness
Ert, Eyal, Ido Erev, and Alvin E. Roth. "A Choice Prediction Competition for Social Preferences in Simple Extensive Form Games: An Introduction." Special Issue on Predicting Behavior in Games. Games 2, no. 3 (September 2011): 257–276.
- 2023
- Working Paper
Complexity and Hyperbolic Discounting
By: Benjamin Enke, Thomas Graeber and Ryan Oprea
A large literature shows that people discount financial rewards hyperbolically instead of exponentially. While discounting of money has been questioned as a measure of time preferences, it continues to be highly relevant in empirical practice and predicts a wide range... View Details
Keywords: Hyperbolic Discounting; Present Bias; Bounded Rationality; Cognitive Uncertainty; Behavioral Finance
Enke, Benjamin, Thomas Graeber, and Ryan Oprea. "Complexity and Hyperbolic Discounting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 24-048, February 2024.
- February 2004
- Case
Note on Human Behavior: Reason and Emotion
By: Nitin Nohria and Bridget Gurtler
Human beings are driven by reasons and emotions. On the one hand, as rational choice theorists assert, human beings are resourceful and evaluative as they strive to maximize their own interests. An individual's interests can converge or diverge from the interests of... View Details
Keywords: Behavior; Cognition and Thinking; Emotions; Interests; Organizations; Organizational Design; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms
Nohria, Nitin, and Bridget Gurtler. "Note on Human Behavior: Reason and Emotion." Harvard Business School Case 404-104, February 2004.
- 07 Jun 2004
- Research & Ideas
What Drives Supply Chain Behavior?
inventory management), production, and logistics. Many of these [academic] papers pursue an optimizing approach given the assumption of a completely rational decision maker. In a supply chain, however, these activities are usually spread... View Details
Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston
- 03 Jun 2010
- Working Paper Summaries
Platforms and Limits to Network Effects
Thomas W. Graeber
Thomas Graeber is an Assistant Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School. He teaches Negotiations in the MBA elective curriculum.
As an empirical behavioral and experimental... View Details
- 1997
- Dictionary Entry
Incommensurable Values
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Values, such as liberty and equality, are sometimes said to be incommensurable in the sense that their value cannot be reduced to a common measure. The possibility of value incommensurability is thought to raise deep questions about practical reason and rational choice... View Details
Hsieh, Nien-he. "Incommensurable Values." In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta. Stanford University, 1997. Electronic. (First published Mon Jul 23, 2007; substantive revision Wed Jul 14, 2021.)
- 26 Nov 2019
- News
Who Killed Healthcare? Dr Regina Herzlinger Knows Who’s Guilty
- Research Summary
Consumer Response to Online Ratings and Recommendations
Jolie is currently conducting several laboratory and field experiments to assess the tendency of individuals to employ predictable heuristics in complex information aggregation tasks, thus leading to search and choice behavior that is suboptimal relative to the fully... View Details
- Research Summary
Overview
By: Nien-he Hsieh
Professor Hsieh’s research concerns ethical issues in business and the responsibilities of global business leaders. His work centers on the question of whether and how managers ought to be guided not only by considerations of economic efficiency, but also by values... View Details
- 2016
- Other Teaching and Training Material
Organizational Behavior Reading: Decision Making
By: Francesca Gino, Max Bazerman and Katherine Shonk
This Reading argues that decision making is systematically flawed and introduces methods to improve decision-making effectiveness. The Essential Reading section covers the rational decision-making model and three important ideas that challenge it: Herbert Simon's... View Details
Gino, Francesca, Max Bazerman, and Katherine Shonk. "Organizational Behavior Reading: Decision Making." Core Curriculum Readings Series. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Publishing 8383, 2016. Electronic.
- 2018
- Chapter
Historical Political Economy
This book is a major contribution to the study of political economy. With chapters ranging from the origins of political economy to its most exciting research fields, this handbook provides a reassessment of political economy as it stands today, while boldly gesturing... View Details
Reinert, Sophus A. "Historical Political Economy." Chap. 5 in The Palgrave Handbook of Political Economy, edited by Ivano Cardinale and Roberto Scazzieri, 133–169. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.