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精挑细选的经济模型
如果一位著名物理学家（例如理查德·费曼）告诉您，有时力与加速度成正比，有时又与加速度的平方成正比，您会作何反应？我猜你会不为所动。但实际上，大多数主流经济学家在理论方面所做的都是同样奇怪的事情 [...]
来源:Lars P Syll精挑细选的经济模型
How would you react if a renowned physicist, say, Richard Feynman, were telling you that sometimes force is proportional to acceleration and at other times it is proportional to acceleration squared? I guess you would be unimpressed.但实际上，大多数主流经济学家在理论发展和模型修改方面所做的都是同样奇怪的事情。
在主流经济理论中，偏好通常以效用函数的形式表达。 But although expected utility theory has been known for a long time to be both theoretically and descriptively inadequate, mainstream economists all over the world gladly continue to use it, as though its deficiencies were unknown or unheard of.
What most mainstream economists try to do in the face of the obvious theoretical and behavioural inadequacies of expected utility theory is to mend it marginally.但这并不是面对科学异常现象时的正确态度。当模型明显错误时，你最好更换它们！ Instead of mending the broken pieces, it would be much better to concentrate on developing descriptively accurate models of choice under uncertainty.
Expected utility theory is seriously flawed, since it does not take into consideration the basic fact that people’s choices are influenced by changes in their wealth. Whereas standard microeconomic theory assumes that preferences are stable over time, behavioural economists have forcefully, again and again, shown that preferences are not fixed but vary with different reference points. How can a theory that does not allow for people having different reference points from which they consider their options have a (typically unquestioned) axiomatic status within economic theory?
实验经济学和行为经济学的大部分成果对于主流经济理论来说确实是个坏消息。它明确地表明预期效用理论只不过是变形的真理。