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Skating on Thin Ice

Cracks in the Public Choice Foundation

I. H. Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba R3T 5V4, Canada frohlic{at}ms.umanitoba.ca

Joe Oppenheimer

Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; joppenheimer{at}gypt.umd.edu

The behavioral assumptions upon which Public Choice, and Game Theory are built, are false. This may not seem to be ‘too serious’ since many theories are only approximations. But a broad spectrum of experimental results has shown the problem to be greater than one of workable proportions. We illustrate the problems by examining some anomalous results in both voluntary contribution games and dictator games. We argue that there are difficulties with both the content and structure of the preferences posited in the standard model, sketch the outlines of a possible solution, and discuss some of the implications of this new perspective for knowledge and theory construction.

Key Words: cognitive model • preference • rationality • self-interest

Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3, 235-266 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0951629806064346


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