IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/45660.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Time to abandon group thinking in economics

Author

Listed:
  • Da Silva, Sergio

Abstract

Group thinking is the notion that animals do those things that maximize the chance of survival of their species. It is wrong because natural selection does not favor what is good for the group or the species; it favors what is good for the individual. Here, I show through examples how group thinking also pervades economics. In connection with the fallacy of group thinking, I also discuss how economics fails to ground itself in the underlying knowledge provided by biology. I also argue that economists need to redirect their conventional approach to study group behavior. Current macroeconomics is reductionist while the route followed by biology, physics, and chemistry was to resort to a different approach when focusing on macro systems made up of a large number of heterogeneous micro units. The group level pattern self-organizes as it is not encoded directly in the individual-level rules. And here the right mathematical models can help deduce hidden connections between the interactions of individuals and the patterns that emerge at the group level.

Suggested Citation

  • Da Silva, Sergio, 2013. "Time to abandon group thinking in economics," MPRA Paper 45660, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:45660
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/45660/1/MPRA_paper_45660.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Da Silva, Sergio, 2009. "Does Macroeconomics Need Microeconomic Foundations?," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 3, pages 1-11.
    2. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, 2008. "Economics needs a scientific revolution," Nature, Nature, vol. 455(7217), pages 1181-1181, October.
    3. Suhadolnik, Nicolas & Galimberti, Jaqueson & Da Silva, Sergio, 2010. "Robot traders can prevent extreme events in complex stock markets," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 389(22), pages 5182-5192.
    4. Jean-Philippe Bouchaud, 2008. "Economics need a scientific revolution," Papers 0810.5306, arXiv.org.
    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. Da Silva, Sergio, 2013. "The mutual gains from trade moderate the parent-offspring conflict," MPRA Paper 46627, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Da Silva, Sergio, 2014. "Time to Abandon Group Thinking in Economics - Updated," MPRA Paper 60559, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Wang, Xiao-Tian & Li, Zhe & Zhuang, Le, 2017. "European option pricing under the Student’s t noise with jumps," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 469(C), pages 848-858.
    3. Torsten Trimborn & Philipp Otte & Simon Cramer & Maximilian Beikirch & Emma Pabich & Martin Frank, 2020. "SABCEMM: A Simulator for Agent-Based Computational Economic Market Models," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 55(2), pages 707-744, February.
    4. Michele Vodret & Iacopo Mastromatteo & Bence Tóth & Michael Benzaquen, 2023. "Microfounding GARCH models and beyond: a Kyle-inspired model with adaptive agents," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 18(3), pages 599-625, July.
    5. Yerali Gandica & Marco Valerio Geraci & Sophie Béreau & Jean-Yves Gnabo, 2018. "Fragmentation, integration and macroprudential surveillance of the US financial industry: Insights from network science," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(4), pages 1-23, April.
    6. Salazar Trujillo, Boris, 2013. "¿Crisis después de la crisis?: el estado de la macroeconomía financiera después de la crisis global," Documentos de Trabajo 11025, Universidad del Valle, CIDSE.
    7. Poledna, Sebastian & Thurner, Stefan & Farmer, J. Doyne & Geanakoplos, John, 2014. "Leverage-induced systemic risk under Basle II and other credit risk policies," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 199-212.
    8. Gerard Ballot & Antoine Mandel & Annick Vignes, 2015. "Agent-based modeling and economic theory: where do we stand?," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 10(2), pages 199-220, October.
    9. Aur'elien Hazan, 2016. "Volume of the steady-state space of financial flows in a monetary stock-flow-consistent model," Papers 1601.00822, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2017.
    10. Torsten Trimborn & Philipp Otte & Simon Cramer & Max Beikirch & Emma Pabich & Martin Frank, 2018. "SABCEMM-A Simulator for Agent-Based Computational Economic Market Models," Papers 1801.01811, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2018.
    11. Chami Figueira, F. & Moura, N.J. & Ribeiro, M.B., 2011. "The Gompertz–Pareto income distribution," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 390(4), pages 689-698.
    12. Ilaria Bordino & Stefano Battiston & Guido Caldarelli & Matthieu Cristelli & Antti Ukkonen & Ingmar Weber, 2012. "Web Search Queries Can Predict Stock Market Volumes," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-17, July.
    13. Doris Neuberger & Roger Rissi, 2014. "Macroprudential Banking Regulation: Does One Size Fit All?," Journal of Banking and Financial Economics, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Management, vol. 1(1), pages 5-28, May.
    14. Yong Tao, 2016. "Spontaneous economic order," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 26(3), pages 467-500, July.
    15. Al-Suwailem, Sami, 2014. "Complexity and endogenous instability," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 393-410.
    16. Kononovicius, A. & Gontis, V., 2014. "Control of the socio-economic systems using herding interactions," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 405(C), pages 80-84.
    17. Damien Challet, 2016. "Regrets, learning and wisdom," Papers 1605.01052, arXiv.org.
    18. Nguyen, Q. & Nguyen, N.K. K. & Nguyen, L.H. N., 2019. "Dynamic topology and allometric scaling behavior on the Vietnamese stock market," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 514(C), pages 235-243.
    19. Huang, Chuangxia & Deng, Yunke & Yang, Xiaoguang & Cao, Jinde & Yang, Xin, 2021. "A network perspective of comovement and structural change: Evidence from the Chinese stock market," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    20. Hazan, Aurélien, 2017. "Volume of the steady-state space of financial flows in a monetary stock-flow-consistent model," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 473(C), pages 589-602.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    group thinking; biology; economics;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • B41 - Schools of Economic Thought and Methodology - - Economic Methodology - - - Economic Methodology
    • D7 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making
    • Y8 - Miscellaneous Categories - - Related Disciplines

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:pra:mprapa:45660. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.