Abstract
Institutions impose social constraints on individual behaviour. They are shared rules that are supported by various enforcement mechanisms. Cognition refers to the process of how human beings perceive and process information, whereas rationality as a heuristic concept refers to the way in which human cognition is modelled in the social sciences. The analysis of institutions is a growing field within economics. But the growth of the literature on institutional economics is accompanied by a growing scepticism towards extending the conventional economic frame of analysis to institutions. In particular, the notion of perfect rationality is increasingly questioned. Perfect rationality may be justified as an ”as if” concept to explain human choice within rules. But this heuristic concept becomes highly questionable when applied to the emergence or change of institutions. At the same time human cognition has become a major field of research in psychology. Therefore, it has to be asked whether institutional economics can learn something from cognitive psychology regarding the proper modelling of rationalitv.
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Kiwit, D., Mummert, U., Streit, M.E. (2000). Cognition, Rationality, and Institutions — Introduction and Overview. In: Streit, M.E., Mummert, U., Kiwit, D. (eds) Cognition, Rationality, and Institutions. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59783-1_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-59783-1_1
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