For a Few Neurons More: Tractability and Neurally Informed Economic Modelling

Abstract

There continues to be significant confusion about the goals, scope, and nature of modelling practice in neuroeconomics. This article aims to dispel some such confusion by using one of the most recent critiques of neuroeconomic modelling as a foil. The article argues for two claims. First, currently, for at least some economic model of choice behaviour, the benefits derivable from neurally informing an economic model do not involve special tractability costs. Second, modelling in neuroeconomics is best understood within Marr’s three-level of analysis framework and in light of a co-evolutionary research ideology. The first claim is established by elucidating the relationship between the tractability of a model, its descriptive accuracy, and its number of variables. The second claim relies on an explanation of what it can take to neurally inform an economic model of choice behaviour. 1 Introduction2 Neurally Informed Models of Choice: A Case Study 2.1 A case study on risk-sensitive choice 2.1.1 Target and modelling framework 2.1.2 Research question and hypotheses 2.1.3 Competitive models of risk-sensitive behaviour 2.1.4 Model-based fMRI: from economics to brains and back 2.2 Neurally informed modelling3 Tractability: When Does Size Matter?4 Neural Integration and the Co-evolutionary Research Ideology5 Conclusion

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 7 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.