Modeling Rational Agents: From Interwar Economics to Early Modern Game Theory

The book explores the evolution, through the first half of the 20th century, of the key neoclassical concept of rationality. The analysis begins with the development of modern decision theory, covers the interwar debates over the role of perfect foresight and analyses the first game-theoretic solution concepts of von Neumann and Nash.

The author's proposition is that the notion of rationality suffered a profound transformation that reduced it to a formal property of consistency. Such a transformation paralleled that of neoclassical economics as a whole from a discipline dealing with real economic processes to one investigating issues of logical consistency between mathematical relationships.

Modeling Rational Agents will be of great interest to scholars of the history of economic thought and method, as well as all those working in the field of game and decision theory.

Nicola Giocoli, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Pisa, Italy