اقتصاد رفتاری و اقتصاد کینزی

The aim of this paper is two-fold: it first evaluates some of the psychological insights offered by Keynes in his economic theories, and secondly it weighs up these insights in the light of recent research in behavioral and experimental economics. We found that many of the psychological ideas set forth by Keynes in his economic works, especially in The General Theory, have a defensible behavioral foundation and fit broadly the actual behavior of economic agents in the real world as suggested by recent empirical evidence. As a consequence, we argue that Keynesian economics can benefit from this interaction, especially for issues related to judgment under uncertainty and building solid microfoundations for macroeconomics.

This paper presented evidence of Keynes’ insightful and rich analysis of individual economic behavior. The necessity to overcome the classical theory and to propose a new economic perspective led him to take individuals as they actually behave under conditions of uncertainty, anticipating many features of modern behavioral studies. The existing evidence provided by research in behavioral and experimental economics suggests that Keynes’ theory was indeed broadly consistent with individual behaviors found in real world situations. The use of heuristics or, in Keynes's words, ‘useful mental habits’, the adoption of conventional behavior, the role of animal spirits in carrying out investment plans, the existence of nominal rigidities based on money illusion and social preferences, among others, so important for the consistency of the new field of ‘behavioral macroeconomics’, are all embedded in the Keynesian revolution. Of course, the microfoundations of macroeconomics is still an unsettled issue, and the fallacy of composition has not been satisfactorily overcome by the profession. Nonetheless, Keynes’ characterization of the aggregate behavior of advanced capitalist economies as prone to financial instability and crises, recurrent bouts of high unemployment, cyclical fluctuations of investment, speculative spurts, and several other features leading to unnecessary waste of resources, has in its realistic treatment of individual behavior the cornerstone upon which a solid microfoundation can be built.