| Economics and Philosophy |
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Spring/Summer 2006
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Professor: Roger
D. Congleton
Office : GW II 02.25 |
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| Office Hours: | Wednesday and Thursday 10:15 - 11:45, and most other times by appointment | . |
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Suggested Texts: |
Mokyr, Joel (2004) The Gifts of Athena : Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy (Paperback) Princeton: Princeton University Press. |
J-Stor Journals RDC1.Net |
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| Dates | Lectures | Suggested Readings |
| 20/4 | Prof Congleton is out of town. Do background reading and familiarize oneself with the syllabus and website. | Mokyr (2004): Information and History |
| 11/5 | I. Rational Choice and the Two Kinds of Imperfect Information |
In Defense of Ignorance |
| 18/5 |
II. Statistical representations of information, theories, and states of the world. | Bayes Law |
| 25/5 | III.Rational decision making under risk and uncertainty. | Knight, F.H. (1921) Risk Uncertainty and Profit |
| 1/6 | IV. Heterogeneous Information and Markets as an Information Aggregating Institutional Arrangement | Hayek, F. A. (1945) The Use of Knowledge in Society |
| 8/6 | V. Rational Search for Useful Information | Stigler, G. J. (1961) The Economics of Information. |
| 15/6 | VI. The Strategic Provision of Information |
Spence, A. M. (2001) Signaling in Retrospect. |
| 22/6 | VII Rational Expectations in Economic Models |
Sargent, TJ (2002) Rational Expectations |
| 29/6 | VIII. Rational Ignorance, Voters, and Electoral Bias | |
| 6/7 | XI.Condorcet's Jury Theorem and Majority Rule | RDC: Informational Limits to Democratic Public Policy |
| 13/7 | XII. Evolution and Society as Information Filters |
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| 20/7 | XIII. Information Markets |
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| 27/07 |
XIV. Overview: the role of information in choice |
roundtable
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| 3/08 |
Final Exam E-mailed to Congleto@GMU.EDU | |
30/9 (papers due) |
Final Papers Due--via e-mail--to: congleto@gmu.edu |
Ideas for Paper Topics |
| Course Grades :
2 pointers: Final Exam 100% |
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