اقتصاد رفتاری جورج آکرلوف و هاروی لیبنستین

Behavioral economics is now receiving greater acceptance in the economics profession. One illustration of this acceptance is the Nobel Prize awarded to George Akerloff in 2001. Akerloff’s work included issues of rationality, work norms, and asymmetric information in both more and less developed countries. Leibenstein was one of the first economists in recent decades to explore behavioral economics. This was accomplished through his development of X-efficiency theory, but not exclusively through X-efficiency theory. This paper will show similarities in the work done by Akerloff and Leibenstein, and cite examples of how Akerloff extended some of Leibenstein’s work, leading to Akerloff’s much deserved Nobel Prize.

Recently, three economists were given the Nobel Prize for their work in behavioral economics: George Akerloff, Daniel Kahneman, and Joseph Stiglitz. Behavioral economics has now received much greater acceptance in the economics profession than it had in 1983 when the first conference on behavioral economics was held at Princeton University. Yet, the recognition it received in 1983 was a large multiple of what it was in 1971 when the Journal of Behavioral Economics (now the Journal of Socio-Economics) was started by Richard Hattwick at Western Illinois University. Even the New York Times has hailed behavioral economics. The problem is, in their February 11, 2001 article, “Some Economists Call Behavior a Key,” the Times claimed that 1994 will be remembered as a “momentous” date in the history of economics (Uchitelle, 2001). The reason it is momentous is that it was the year in which David Laibson received his Ph.D. Laibson’s work may one day earn him a Nobel Prize. But if it does he will be standing on the shoulders of the pioneers of behavioral economics, people such as Akerloff, Kahneman, Stiglitz, and Herbert Simon, all winners of the Nobel Prize, as well as George Katona, Richard Thaler, and Harvey Leibenstein. The focus of my paper is Leibenstein and Akerloff, specifically, how Akerloff’s work extended Leibenstein’s. In the next section I present a very short discussion of the salient characteristics of Leibenstein’s X-efficiency theory. This is followed by a discussion of some of Akerloff’s work. Finally, I present some extensions of Leibenstein’s work contained in Akerloff’s research.