Beteendeekonomi är en populär gren av nationalekonomin för tillfället. Den bör dock inte accepteras okritiskt. I detta års Max Weber-föreläsning, ”Is Behavioral Economics Doomed?”, tar professor David Levine ned beteendeekonomin på jorden lite grann, bl.a. genom att påpeka att nationalekonomi inte är psykologi:

The key difference between psychologists and economists is that psychologists are interested in individual behavior while economists are interested in explaining the results of groups of people interacting. Psychologists also are focused on human dysfunction – much of the goal of psychology (the bulk of psychologists are in clinical practices) is to help people become more functional. In fact, most people are quite functional most of the time. Hence the focus of economists on people who are ”rational.” Certain kinds of events – panics, for example – that are of interest to economist no doubt will benefit from understanding human dysfunctionality. But the balancing of portfolios by mutual fund managers, for example, is not such an obvious candidate. Indeed one of the themes of this essay is that in the experimental lab the simplest model of human behavior – selfish rationality with imperfect learning – does an outstanding job of explaining the bulk of behavior.

Det är alltså inte så att homo economicus är död. Han må behöva kompletteras på en del områden – ingen samhällsvetenskaplig modell är komplett eller perfekt – men i grunden lever han i viss välmåga.

Se även det tidigare inlägget ”Kritik av behavioral economics”.