Behavioral economics gets coopted to excuse rather than reform orthodox theory

Evidence

It seems that every week a new book or major newspaper article appears showing that irrational decision-making helped cause the housing bubble … It’s becoming clear that behavioral economics is being asked to solve problems it wasn’t meant to address … Behavioral economics should complement, not substitute for, more substantive economic interventions [of] traditional economics. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 745

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: how behavioral economics became a preemptive concession that let orthodoxy absorb criticism of rational-agent models without conceding structural reform.
• XREF: connects to: Post-1980 economists selectively adopt psychological doctrines that reinforce neoclassical orthodoxy. — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 2207; Belief in bodily self-ownership props up neoclassical economics but is itself a myth — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 415; Economics as a discipline profited from manufactured doubt rather than suffering from it — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 633 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Behavioral economics repackaged government intervention during the neoliberal era #corroborates (0.85) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 346
• Behavioral economics shares origins with, rather than refutes, neoliberal thought #corroborates (0.82) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 39