Mises Wire

Does Neuroscience Support Austrian Theory?

Does Neuroscience Support Austrian Theory?
While the rational-expectations school attempts to explain away market bubbles and the ensuing crashes, the Austrian School, which formerly stood alone in providing a compelling explanation for these market phenomena, now has help from the neuroscience community, writes Doug French. In his book Why Choose This Book? Read Montague takes us inside the brain to understand how we make decisions. Montague is no economist. Neuroscience is his beat. Why Choose uses computational neuroscience, an extension of evolutionary biology that studies the actual information processing supported by our brains, to try to figure just why humans act the way they act. The work of neuroscientists Montague and Lohrenz indicates that regret, "the counterfactual learning signal, was a powerful determinate in the betting decisions that created [subject] losses while playing against the 1929 market." "In fact," Montague writes, "as cultural and financial historians run that period through various analyses, regret about a host of decisions, individual and institutional, permeates every one." FULL ARTICLE
All Rights Reserved ©
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. 

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member
Mises Institute