Academic

Book Announcement: Rational Decisions by Binmore in Paperback

By Lawrence Solum

Rational Decisions
Ken Binmore
 

To read the entire book description or a sample chapter, please visit: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8902.html

It is widely held that Bayesian decision theory is the final word on how a rational person should make decisions. However, Leonard Savage--the inventor of Bayesian decision theory--argued that it would be ridiculous to use his theory outside the kind of small world in which it is always possible to "look before you leap." If taken seriously, this view makes Bayesian decision theory inappropriate for the large worlds of scientific discovery and macroeconomic enterprise. When is it correct to use Bayesian decision theory--and when does it need to be modified? Using a minimum of mathematics, Rational Decisions clearly explains the foundations of Bayesian decision theory and shows why Savage restricted the theory's application to small worlds.

"This short, ambitious book is intended to appeal to the presumed curiosity of economists, statisticians, and philosophers as to what constitutes rationality in scientific induction. Binmore, a game theorist aware of the daunting complexity of his subject matter for nonspecialists, has gone to great pains in making his work accessible, even offering marginal symbols to indicate the substantial portions of the text best avoided by readers lacking the author's appetite for mathematical data."--Choice

Paper | $24.95 / £16.95 | ISBN: 978-0-691-14989-9
Cloth | $42.00 / £28.95 | ISBN: 978-0-691-13074-3
e-Book | $24.95 | ISBN: 978-1-4008-3309-2

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on March 23, 2011 (boomark / email).