Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

Traditional accounts of rational decision making cannot be applied in the field of macroeconomic policy-making because macroeconomic forecasts fail consistently. Having elaborated a minimalist notion of instrumental rationality, this chapter shows in particular that neither the deterministic nor the probabilistic account of rational choice can be applied. Furthermore, rational decision making cannot be based on causal knowledge, either. Eventually, macroeconomic policy-making is characterized as decision making under uncertainty and ignorance.

This chapter explores alternative approaches to decision making under uncertainty and ignorance: the quasi-probabilistic approach, extremum approaches and approaches focusing on the spectrum of future options and possibilities. It defines the approaches by their respective bridge-principles before presenting sound applications and discussing their limitations. Also, it introduces the theory of sequential decision making which allows to apply the findings regarding one step decisions to sequential cases, too. In sum, this chapter demonstrates that there is no unique, entirely convincing approach to decision making under uncertainty and ignorance.

The idea of post-normal science (PNS) as a way of managing uncertainties in science and politics was proposed by Funtowicz & Ravetz in the 1990s. Having defined PNS around the core-idea of lay-involvement, this chapter reconstructs two types of arguments in its favor: epistemic arguments on the one side and normative arguments on the other one. These arguments are primarily inspired by Beck, Feyerabend and Funtowicz & Ravetz themselves. Finally, this chapter suggests a slight modification of PNS in order to circumvent a potential problem.