IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/pal/palchp/978-1-137-37193-5_5.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Economics, Behaviorism, and Utilitarianism

In: Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen J. DeCanio

    (University of California)

Abstract

Behaviorism and utilitarianism lie at the heart of economic theory and welfare economics as they are practiced today. The reasons for this are both historical and methodological. To be described mathematically, individual behavior has to be expressed through a functional form that converts the consumption or uses of ‘goods’ to a numerical measure of satisfaction — well-being or ‘utility.’ Cognitive processes are reduced to calculations of how to maximize the utility function given the constraints of an individual’s wealth, income, and endowments of goods, talents, and capital. This is behaviorism on steroids; the ‘stimuli’ provided by prices are transformed into the ‘responses’ of the individual in choosing the bundle of goods that maximize utility.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen J. DeCanio, 2014. "Economics, Behaviorism, and Utilitarianism," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Limits of Economic and Social Knowledge, chapter 5, pages 122-151, Palgrave Macmillan.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37193-5_5
    DOI: 10.1057/9781137371935_5
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:palchp:978-1-137-37193-5_5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.