IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ses/arsjes/1997-ii-7.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bounded Rationality: Models of Fast and Frugal Inference

Author

Listed:
  • Gerd Gigerenzer

Abstract

I specify general criteria for models of bounded rationality and discuss specific models for satisficing inference. The task of these fast and frugal algorithms is to infer unknown features of their environment under the constraints of limited knowledge, limited time, and limited computational capacities. These algorithms violate fundamental tenets of classical rationality: They neither look up nor integrate all information. I review the performance of the satisficing "Take The Best" algorithm. Despite its frugality, Take The Best can make as many correct inferences as computationally expensive weighted linear models that use and combine all available information. Accurate inferences need not follow the dictates of classical rationality.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerd Gigerenzer, 1997. "Bounded Rationality: Models of Fast and Frugal Inference," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 133(II), pages 201-218, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:ses:arsjes:1997-ii-7
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sjes.ch/papers/1997-II-7.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Einhorn, Hj & Hogarth, Rm, 1981. "Behavioral Decision-Theory - Processes Of Judgment And Choice," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(1), pages 1-31.
    2. Tom R. Tyler, 1997. "Procedural Fairness and Compliance with the Law," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (SJES), Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES), vol. 133(II), pages 219-240, June.
    3. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tversky, 2013. "Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Leonard C MacLean & William T Ziemba (ed.), HANDBOOK OF THE FUNDAMENTALS OF FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING Part I, chapter 6, pages 99-127, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    4. Herbert A. Simon, 1955. "A Behavioral Model of Rational Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 69(1), pages 99-118.
    5. Keeney,Ralph L. & Raiffa,Howard, 1993. "Decisions with Multiple Objectives," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521438834, January.
    6. Shanteau, James, 1989. "Cognitive heuristics and biases in behavioral auditing: Review, comments and observations," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 14(1-2), pages 165-177, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Schmidt, Robert & Wollmershäuser, Timo, 2004. "Sterilized Foreign Exchange Market Interventions in a Chartist-Fundamentalist Exchange Rate Model," W.E.P. - Würzburg Economic Papers 50, University of Würzburg, Department of Economics.
    2. Charness, Gary B & Levin, Dan & Karni, Edi, 2008. "On the Conjunction Fallacy in Probability Judgment: New Experimental Evidence," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt2dn4t727, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    3. Tommaso Ciarli & André Lorentz & Marco Valente & Maria Savona, 2019. "Structural changes and growth regimes," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 29(1), pages 119-176, March.
    4. Charness, Gary & Karni, Edi & Levin, Dan, 2010. "On the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment: New experimental evidence regarding Linda," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 551-556, March.
    5. Tommaso Ciarli, 2012. "Structural Interactions and Long Run Growth. An Application of Experimental Design to Agent Based Models," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(5), pages 295-345.
    6. Tommaso Ciarli & André Lorentz & Maria Savona & Marco Valente, 2010. "The Effect Of Consumption And Production Structure On Growth And Distribution. A Micro To Macro Model," Metroeconomica, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 61(1), pages 180-218, February.
    7. Daniele Schilirò, 2018. "Economic Decisions and Simon’s Notion of Bounded Rationality," International Business Research, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(7), pages 64-75, July.
    8. Tommaso Ciarli & Andre' Lorentz & Maria Savona & Marco Valente, 2012. "The role of technology, organisation, and demand in growth and income distribution," LEM Papers Series 2012/06, Laboratory of Economics and Management (LEM), Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wüstemann, Jens, 2004. "Evaluation and Response to Risk in International Accounting and Audit Systems: Framework and German Experiences," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 04-20, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    2. Sadok Mansour, 2007. "Modelisation Du Risque Dans Les Methodologies D'Audit : Apport Des De La Psychometrie," Post-Print halshs-00543217, HAL.
    3. repec:cup:judgdm:v:16:y:2021:i:6:p:1324-1369 is not listed on IDEAS
    4. Feduzi, Alberto & Runde, Jochen, 2014. "Uncovering unknown unknowns: Towards a Baconian approach to management decision-making," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 124(2), pages 268-283.
    5. repec:dau:papers:123456789/3528 is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Wüstemann, Jens, 2004. "Evaluation and response to risk in international accounting and audit systems : framework and German experiences," Papers 04-20, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.
    7. Sudeep Bhatia & Graham Loomes & Daniel Read, 2021. "Establishing the laws of preferential choice behavior," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 16(6), pages 1324-1369, November.
    8. Stephen X. Zhang & Javier Cueto, 2017. "The Study of Bias in Entrepreneurship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 41(3), pages 419-454, May.
    9. Mark Van Boening & Tanja F. Blackstone & Michael McKee & Elisabet Rutstrom, 2006. "Benefit packages and individual behavior: choices over discrete goods with multiple attributes," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(6), pages 511-526.
    10. Park, Sungsoon & Rothrock, Ling, 2007. "Systematic analysis of framing bias in missile defense: Implications toward visualization design," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 182(3), pages 1383-1398, November.
    11. Víctor Alberto Pena & Alina Gómez-Mejía, 2019. "Effect of the anchoring and adjustment heuristic and optimism bias in stock market forecasts," Revista Finanzas y Politica Economica, Universidad Católica de Colombia, vol. 11(2), pages 389-409, November.
    12. Weber, Elke U., 1989. "A Behavioral Approach To Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Implications And Lessons For Expected Utility Theory," 1989 Quantifying Long Run Agricultural Risks and Evaluating Farmer Responses to Risk Meeting, April 9-12, 1989, Sanibel Island, Florida 271520, Regional Research Projects > S-232: Quantifying Long Run Agricultural Risks and Evaluating Farmer Responses to Risk.
    13. Manski, Charles F., 2013. "Public Policy in an Uncertain World: Analysis and Decisions," Economics Books, Harvard University Press, number 9780674066892, Spring.
    14. Adam Safron, 2019. "Multilevel evolutionary developmental optimization (MEDO): A theoretical framework for understanding preferences and selection dynamics," Papers 1910.13443, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2019.
    15. Wierenga, Berend, 2011. "Managerial decision making in marketing: The next research frontier," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 89-101.
    16. Torgler, Benno & Schneider, Friedrich & Schaltegger, Christoph A., 2007. "With or Against the People? The Impact of a Bottom-Up Approach on Tax Morale and the Shadow Economy," Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics, Working Paper Series qt6331x6vz, Berkeley Olin Program in Law & Economics.
    17. Daniel Fonseca Costa & Francisval Carvalho & Bruno César Moreira & José Willer Prado, 2017. "Bibliometric analysis on the association between behavioral finance and decision making with cognitive biases such as overconfidence, anchoring effect and confirmation bias," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(3), pages 1775-1799, June.
    18. Christina Leuker & Thorsten Pachur & Ralph Hertwig & Timothy J. Pleskac, 2019. "Do people exploit risk–reward structures to simplify information processing in risky choice?," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 5(1), pages 76-94, August.
    19. Marianne Bertrand & Dean S. Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2005. "What's Psychology Worth? A Field Experiment in the Consumer Credit Market," Working Papers 918, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    20. Giuseppe Pernagallo & Benedetto Torrisi, 2020. "A theory of information overload applied to perfectly efficient financial markets," Review of Behavioral Finance, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 14(2), pages 223-236, October.
    21. Siegfried Berninghaus & Werner Güth & M. Vittoria Levati & Jianying Qiu, 2006. "Satisficing in sales competition: experimental evidence," Papers on Strategic Interaction 2006-32, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group.
    22. Yang, Bijou & Lester, David, 1995. "New directions for economics," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 433-446.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ses:arsjes:1997-ii-7. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kurt Schmidheiny (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sgvssea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.