Financial Transparency Coalition

Economists have some funny ideas. Often these ideas are controversial. Sometimes these ideas are brilliant and intuitive. Other times these ideas are brilliant, intuitive, and just plain wrong. It’s often difficult to know the difference between the two. It usually takes another economist to figure it out. Economists have long held the (brilliant, intuitive, and possibly wrong) belief that people make the best decisions for themselves. This is called rational choice theory (or, simply, rationality) and it underlies almost all economic theory. This confuses a lot of non-economists who understand “rationality” to mean “sane” or “making good choices.” Rationality to...