Conversions not Decisions

Abstract

The concept of the decision lies at the heart of economics today. This has always been true of microeconomics, where the decisions of consumers, entrepreneurs, and owners of factors of production have been analyzed. The connection is less direct but still strong in macroeconomics, where it is generally considered desirable to be able to rationalize all behavioral relations in terms of plausible models of decision-making by the relevant agents. Even in the verification process the decision has become important as the investigator’s decision about the relation between data and hypothesis defines the format of analysis of the verification process, at least in one popular version. Finalljr, the approach is spreading, to political science especially, but also to social psychology. It is not too strong to say that behaviorism, based on the analysis of decisions’, bids fair to become the integrated social science of the future.