Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-p9bg8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:42:08.344Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

PROSPECTING NEUROECONOMICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

Andreas Ortmann*
Affiliation:
CERGE-EI*

Abstract

The following is a set of reading notes on, and questions for, the Neuroeconomics enterprise. My reading of neuroscience evidence seems to be at odds with basic conceptions routinely assumed in the Neuroeconomics literature. I also summarize methodological concerns regarding design, implementation, and statistical evaluation of Neuroeconomics experiments.

Type
Essay
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Anderson, M. A. 2007a. Evolution of cognitive function via redeployment of brain areas. The Neuroscientist 13: 1321.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson, M. A. 2007b. The massive redeployment hypothesis and the functional topography of the brain. Philosophical Psychology 21: 143–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, M. A. 2007c. Massive redeployment, exaptation, and the functional integration of cognitive operations. Synthese 159: 329–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, M. A. Forthcoming. Circuit sharing and the implementation of intelligent systems. Manuscript.Google Scholar
Bargh, J. A. and Chartrand, T. L.. 1999. The unbearable automaticity of being. American Psychologist 54: 462–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumeister, R. F. and Sommer, K. L.. 1997. Consciousness, free choice, and automaticity. In Advances in social cognition, Vol. X, ed. Wyer, R. S. Jr., 7581. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Beauchamp, M. S. 2005. See me, hear me, touch me: multisensory integration in lateral occipital-temporal cortex. Current Opinions in Neurobiology 15: 145–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhatt, M., and Camerer, C.. 2005. Self-referential thinking and equilibrium as states of mind in games: FMRI evidence. Games and Economic Behavior 52: 424–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K. 2007a. Does game theory work? The bargaining challenge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K. 2007b. Playing for real: A Text on Game Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Binmore, K. and Shaked, A.. 2007. Experimental economics: Science or what? Manuscript. Available at http://else.econ.ucl.ac.uk/papers/uploaded/263.pdf.Google Scholar
Cabeza, R. and Nyberg, L.. 2000. Imaging cognition II: An empirical review of 275 PET and FMRI studies. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 12: 147.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G. and Prelec, D.. 2005. Neuroeconomics: How neuroscience can inform economics. Journal of Economic Literature 43: 964.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cherry, T., Frykblom, P. and Shogren, J.. 2002. Hardnose the dictator. American Economic Review 92: 1218–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coricelli, G., Critchley, H. D., Joffily, M., O'Doherty, J. P., Sirigu, A. and Dolan, R. J.. 2005. Regret and its avoidance: a neuroimaging study of choice behavior. Nature Neuroscience 8: 1253–62.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dobbs, D. 2005. Fact or phrenology? Scientific American Mind 16: 2431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doya, K. 2008. Modulators of decision making. Nature Neuroscience 11: 410416.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fodor, J. A. 1983. The modularity of mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, J. A. 1999. Let your brain alone. London Book Review 30 September.Google Scholar
Fodor, J. A. 2000. The mind doesn't work that way: The scope and limits of computational psychology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, M. D., Snyder, A. Z., Vincent, J. L. and Raichle, M. E.. 2007. Intrinsic fluctuations within cortical systems account for intertrial variability in human behavior. Neuron 56: 171–84.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fox, M. D., Snyder, A. Z., Zacks, J. M. and Raichle, M. E.. 2006. Coherent spontaneous activity accounts for trial-to-trial variability in human evoked brain responses. Nature Neuroscience 9: 2325.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fox, M. D. and Raichle, M. E.. 2007. Spontaneous fluctuations in brain activity observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 8: 700–11.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gerlach, C. 2007. A review of functional imaging studies on category specificity. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 19: 296314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gigerenzer, G. 1996. On narrow norms and vague heuristics: A reply to Kahneman and Tversky (1996). Psychological Review 103: 592–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glimcher, P. W. 2003. Decisions, uncertainty, and the brain: The science of neuroeconomics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glimcher, P. W., Dorris, M. C. and Bayer, H. B.. 2005. Physiological utility theory and the neuroeconomics of choice. Games and Economic Behavior 52: 213–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldberg, E. and Podell, K.. 1999. Adaptive versus veridical decision making, and the frontal lobes. Consciousness and Cognition 8: 364–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goldberg, E. 2001. The executive brain. frontal lobes and the civilized mind. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, E. 2005. The wisdom paradox, how your mind can grow stronger as your brain grows older. New York: Gotham Books.Google Scholar
Gul, F. and Pesendorfer, W.. 2008. The case for mindless economics. In Foundations of Positive and Normative Economics, ed. Caplin, A. and Schotter, A.. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harrison, G. W. 2008. Neuroeconomics: a critical reconsideration. Economics and Philosophy 24.Google Scholar
Harrison, G. W. and List, J. A.. 2004. Field experiments. Journal of Economic Literature 42: 1009–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, G. W. and Lau, M. I.. 2005. Is the evidence for hyperbolic discounting in humans just an experimental artefact? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 28: 657.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harrison, G. W., Johnson, E., McInnes, M. M. and Rutström, E. E.. 2005. Risk aversion and incentive effects. American Economic Review 95: 900–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henrich, J. 2000. Does culture matter in economic behavior? Ultimatum game bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon. American Economic Review 90: 973–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertwig, R. and Ortmann, A.. 2001a. Experimental practices in economics: a methodological challenge for psychologists? Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24: 383403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hertwig, R. and Ortmann, A.. 2001b. Money, lies, and replicability: on the need for empirically grounded experimental practices and interdisciplinary discourse. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 24: 433–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hertwig, R. and Ortmann, A.. 2005. The cognitive illusions controversy: a methodological debate in disguise that matters to economists. In Experimental Business Research, ed. Zwick, R. and Rapoport, A., 361–78. Boston, MA: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Hertwig, R. and Ortmann, A.. 2008. Deception in experiments: Revisiting the arguments in its defense. Ethics and Behavior 18: 5992.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hoffman, E., McCabe, K. and Smith, V. L.. 1996. Social distance and other-regarding behavior. American Economic Review 7: 653–60.Google Scholar
Holt, C. A. and Laury, S. K.. 2002. Risk aversion and incentive effects. American Economic Review 92: 1644–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaffe, E. 2006. My brain is a walnut. Inside an fMRI machine. Slate, posted on January 10, 2006, at 3.51. Available at www.slate.com/id/2134094/Google Scholar
Johnson, E. J., Camerer, C., Sen, S. and Rymon, T.. 2002. Detecting failures of backward induction: monitoring information search in sequential bargaining. Journal of Economic Theory 104: 1647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahneman, D. and Tversky, A.. 1996. On the reality of cognitive illusions. Psychological Review 103: 582–91.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knoch, D., Pascual-Leone, A., Meyer, K., Treyer, V. and Fehr, E.. 2006. Diminishing reciprocal fairness by disrupting the right prefrontal cortex. Science 314: 829–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
LeDoux, J. 2002. Synaptic self. How our brains become who we are. New York: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Lee, D. 2008. Game theory and neural basis of social decision making. Nature Neuroscience 11: 404–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Levitt, S. D. and List, J. A.. 2007. What do laboratory experiments measuring social preferences reveal about the real world? Journal of Economic Perspectives 21: 153–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liepert, J., Bauder, H., Miltner, W. H. R., Taub, E. and Weiller, C.. 2000. Treatment-induced massive cortical reorganization after stroke in humans. Stroke 31: 1210–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
List, J. A. 2006. The behavioralist meets the market: measuring social preferences and reputation effects in actual transactions. Journal of Political Economy 114: 156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lo, A. W. and Repin, D. V.. 2002. The psychophysiology of real-time financial risk processing. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 14: 323–39.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCabe, K. M., Houser, D., Ryan, L., Smith, V. L. and Trouard, T.. 2001. A functional imaging study of cooperation in two-person reciprocal exchange. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 98: 11832–5.Google Scholar
McClure, S. M., Laibson, D. I., Loewenstein, G. and Cohen, J. D.. 2004. Separate neural systems value immediate and delayed monetary rewards. Science 306: 503–7.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meardon, S. J. and Ortmann, A.. 1996a. Self-command in Adam Smith's theory of moral sentiments. A game-theoretic reinterpretation. Rationality and Society 8: 5780.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meardon, S. J. and Ortmann, A.. 1996b. Yes, Adam Smith was an economist. (A very modern one indeed.) Rationality and Society 8: 348–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Montague, P. R. and Lohrenz, T.. 2007. To detect and correct: norm violations and their enforcement. Neuron 56: 1418.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Murphy, N. and Brown, W. S.. 2007. Did my neurons make me do it? Philosophical and neurobiological perspectives on moral responsibility and free will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortmann, A. 2005. Field experiments in economics: some methodological caveats. In Field Experiments in Economics. Research in Experimental Economics, Vol. 10, ed. Carpenter, J. P., Harrison, G. W. and List, J. A.., 5170. Amsterdam: Elsevier.Google Scholar
Ortmann, A. and Hertwig, R.. 2000. One-off scenarios as individuating information, repeated game context as base rate information: On the construction and deconstruction of anomalies in economics. Manuscript, presented at the ESA meetings, New York, June 2000. Available at http://home.cerge-ei.cz/ortmann/Papers/10baseratesii06142000.pdfGoogle Scholar
Ortmann, A. and Hertwig, R.. 2002. The costs of deception: evidence from psychology. Experimental Economics 5: 111–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortony, A. Clore, G. L. and Collins, A.. 1988. The cognitive structure of emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pessoa, L. 2008. On the relationship between emotion and cognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 9: 148158.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pinker, S. 2005. So how does the mind work? Mind and Language 20: 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plott, C. R. and Zeiler, K.. 2005. The willingness to pay-willingness to accept gap, the ‘endowment effect’, subject misconceptions, and experimental procedures for eliciting valuations. American Economic Review 95: 530–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Plott, C. R. and Zeiler, K.. 2007. Exchange asymmetries incorrectly interpreted as evidence of endowment effect theory and prospect theory. American Economic Review 97: 1449–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Posner, M. I. 2003. Imaging a science of mind. Trends in Cognitive Science 7: 450–53.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Prinz, J. J. 2006. Is the mind really modular? In Contemporary debates in cognitive science, ed. Stainton, R. J.., 5980. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar
Rabin, M. 1998. Psychology and economics. Journal of Economic Literature 36: 1146.Google Scholar
Rilling, J. K., Gutman, D. A., Zeh, T. R., Pagnoni, G., Berns, G. S. and Kilts, C. D.. 2002. A neural basis for social cooperation. Neuron 35: 395405.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Roth, A. E. 2007. Questions for neuro-social-scientists. Presentation at Consulate of Switzerland, March 15, 2007. Available at http://kuznets.fas.harvard.edu/~aroth/critiques%20of%20experimental%20econ.htmlGoogle Scholar
Rumpel, S., LeDoux, J., Zador, A. and Malinow, R.. 2005. Postsynaptic receptor trafficking underlying a form of associative learning. Science 308: 83–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rustichini, A. 2005. Neuroeconomics: present and future. Games and Economic Behavior 52: 201–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanfey, A. G., Rilling, J. K., Aronson, J. A., Nystrom, L. E. and Cohen, J. D.. 2003. The neural basis of economic decision making in the ultimatum game. Science 300: 1755–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Schultz, W. 2006. Behavioral theories and the neurophysiology of reward. Annual Review of Psychology 57: 87115.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Smith, V. L. 2008. Rationality in economics. Constructivist and ecological forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Spitzer, M., Fischbacher, U., Herrnberger, B., Gron, G. and Fehr, E.. 2007. The neural signature of social norm compliance. Neuron 56: 185–96.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Taub, E., Uswatte, G., King, D. K., Morris, D.M., Crago, J. E. and Chatterjee, A.. 2006. A placebo controlled trial of constraint-induced movement therapy for upper extremity after stroke. Stroke 37: 1045–9.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Thirion, B., Pinel, P., Meriaux, S., Roche, A., Dehaene, S. and Poline, J-B.. 2007. Analysis of a large FMRI cohort: statistical and methodological issues for group analyses. NeuroImage 35: 105–20.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Uttal, W. 2001. The new phrenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Uttal, W. R. Can high-level cognitive functions be localized? Manuscript for TICS, URL=<http://rsl.stanford.edu/nis/deb_articles/Uttal_article.pdfGoogle Scholar
Wang, K., Jiang, T., Yu, C., Tian, L., Li, J., Liu, Y., Zhou, Y., Xu, L., Song, M. and Li, K.. 2007. Spontaneous activity associated with primary visual cortex: a resting-state FMRI study. Cerebral Cortex 18: 697704.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wei, X., Yoo, S. S., Dickey, C. C., Zou, K. H., Guttmann, C. R. G. and Panych, L.P.. 2004. Functional MRI of auditory and verbal working memory: long-term reproducibility analysis. NeuroImage 21: 1000–8.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Xiao, E. and Houser, D.. 2005. Emotion expression in human punishment behavior. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 102: 7398–401.Google Scholar
Zak, P. J. 2004. Neuroeconomics. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London Series B 359: 1737–48.Google ScholarPubMed