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Simple heuristics that make us dumb

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 April 2001

Howard Margolis
Affiliation:
The Irving B. Harris Graduate School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637 hmarg@uchicago.edu

Abstract

The simple heuristics that may indeed usually make us smart–or at least smart enough–in contexts of individual choice will sometimes make us dumb, especially in contexts of social choice. Here each individual choice (or vote) has little impact on the overall choice, although the overall choice is compounded out of the individual choices. I use an example (risk aversion) to illustrate the point.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
© 2000 Cambridge University Press

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