IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2207.02902.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Homo economicus to model human behavior is ethically doubtful and mathematically inconsistent

Author

Listed:
  • M. Lunkenheimer
  • A. Kracklauer
  • G. Klinkova
  • M. Grabinski

Abstract

In many models in economics or business a dominantly self-interested homo economicus is assumed. Unfortunately (or fortunately), humans are in general not homines economici as e.g. the ultimatum game shows. This leads to the fact that all these models are at least doubtful. Moreover, economists started to set a quantitative value for the feeling of social justice, altruism, or envy and the like to execute utilitarian calculation. Besides being ethically doubtful, it delivers an explanation in hindsight with little predicting power. We use examples from game theory to show its arbitrariness. It is even possible that a stable Nash equilibrium can be calculated while it does not exist at all, due to the wide differences in human values. Finally, we show that assigned numbers for envy or altruism and the like do not build a field (in a mathematical sense). As there is no homomorphism to real numbers or a subset of it, any calculation is generally invalid or arbitrary. There is no (easy) way to fix the problem. One has to go back to ethical concepts like the categorical imperative or use at most semi quantitative approaches like considering knaves and knights. Mathematically one can only speculate whether e.g. surreal numbers can make ethics calculable.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Lunkenheimer & A. Kracklauer & G. Klinkova & M. Grabinski, 2022. "Homo economicus to model human behavior is ethically doubtful and mathematically inconsistent," Papers 2207.02902, arXiv.org.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2207.02902
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2207.02902
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philipp Schreck & Dominik Aaken & Karl Homann, 2020. "“There’s Life in the Old Dog Yet”: The Homo economicus model and its value for behavioral ethics," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 90(3), pages 401-425, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.

      More about this item

      NEP fields

      This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

      Statistics

      Access and download statistics

      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:arx:papers:2207.02902. 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.

      If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

      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.