Neuroeconomic reductionism at work? A review of Paul W. Glimcher's Foundations of neuroeconomic analysis. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011, 488 pp.

Abstract

Recent years have seen a wave of interest in connections between neuroscience and the models and generalizations of neoclassical and behavioral economics. Interdisciplinary investigations of decisionmaking in humans and non-human animals have yielded a flagship neuroeconomics textbook (Glimcher, et al. 2009), hundreds of journal articles, and high-profile academic conferences. They have also attracted constructive and destructive criticism—not to mention charges of hype and irrelevance—from cognitive neuroscientists (Gallistel 2009), economists (Gul and Pessendorfer 2008), and philosophers of science (Ross 2008).