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The purpose of this thesis is to illustrate how the role of knowledge may be the missing link in economics and to argue that the assumption of unbounded rationality, which underpinned neoclassical economics, should be replaced by bounded rationality and that bounded rationality should be redefined as people are rational, but are constrained by asymmetric and imperfect knowledge. This decomposition of bounded rationality makes it possible for us to operationalize bounded rationality, which was founded by Herbert Simon in the 1950s, but has not been widely adopted in economics because the concept was considered too difficult to formalize. The inclusion of asymmetric and imperfect knowledge considerations in microeconomics provides new insights into the existence and boundaries of firms, the role and nature of institutions, financial market inefficiency and political choices. The inclusion of asymmetric knowledge considerations in macroeconomics can help explain the unequal distribution of wealth between individuals, firms and nations. A lack of knowledge, and the difficulties in overcoming a lack of knowledge, can help to explain aspects of economic fluctuations, prices rigidities, monetary non-neutrality and unemployment. Most importantly, when the role of knowledge is considered, it provides better explanations to various anomalies in economics, helps reconciles differences between various theories and may opens up the possibility of unifying various schools of economic thought.

published_or_final_version / Politics and Public Administration / Master / Master of Philosophy

The aim of this thesis is to conduct a case study examining the intrusion of marketplace ideals on various aspects of everyday life. In this thesis, I provide a case study of a new business in San Francisco, ReservationHop, that transforms the previously first come, first serve restaurant reservation service into an auction style scalping (resell at a higher price) system, thereby affecting the distribution of an economic service, or good. In order to investigate this phenomenon, this thesis is organized into six main sections. First, I will provide a brief introduction to the thesis, presenting my aim and purpose in writing and why I believe that this is an important topic. I then introduce ReservationHop and describe the site and its business model, the controversy that it has evoked, and the app's creator Brian Mayer's attempts to defend the app's legitimacy. Thirdly, I will provide considerations in support of the ethical permissibility of the ReservationHop business model, using two neoclassical economic arguments: consumer choice theory and the Pareto-efficiency argument. Fourthly, I will counter these arguments, claiming that this service is not a Pareto optimal improvement because it involves deception, which is incompatible with genuine Pareto optimality. In the fifth section, I will introduce my main argument against ReservationHop in which I introduce the idea that there is something inherently wrong with the service even if its deceptive characteristics were corrected for. I argue that there should be "things that money cannot buy" because unfettered marketization erodes the nonmarket value of community, or commonality. In conclusion, this thesis argues that the intrusion of marketplace values on all aspects of society should be resisted, and that we must rethink the increased influence of marketization for it crowds out other important non-market values, e.g., our sense of community solidarity.

Buying a home is among the most important choices that any individual is likely to make in their lifetime. It has lasting consequences for happiness, well-being and personal finances. Yet, given the infrequency with which such decisions are made; the difficulty getting information from an opaque and decentralised marketplace; and the high transactions costs involved, there is a significant risk that decision making may depart from the high standard imposed by the normative economic concept of 'rational choice'. This thesis uses the insights of the economic theory of choice - from behavioural economics in particular - to examine housing choice from a new perspective. It considers the potential for estate agents, knowingly or otherwise, to exploit behavioural biases in decision making to influence preference and, ultimately, choices over housing. This naturally is of interest to estate agents and policy makers involved in housing markets; but most importantly to individuals as decision makers: making better decisions relies on understanding when and where vulnerability to manipulation may lie. Using evidence from a series of classroom experiments with 280 student volunteers and from two online surveys with over 4,000 adult respondents, significant areas where individuals may be consistently vulnerable to manipulation of judgement are found and recorded. In particular, both student and adult respondents are susceptible to biases involving manipulation of the decision making context, known as the choice frame. Students also tend to rely on arbitrary 'anchor' points to make value estimates, which results in significantly impaired judgements, even in the presence of incentives for accuracy. Finally, evidence of a significant new form of behavioural bias is found, in which elements of the choice frame have an unexpectedly negative impact on perceptions. This new bias is persistent across several experimental scenarios and is labelled the 'choice pollution effect'.

Interviews were conducted with 20 parents in the US who have adopted one or more children from China. The study focuses on the motivation to adopt, decision making regarding adoption and the process in relation to rational choice theory. The interviews also inquired about their required adoption trip to China and the post-adoption adjustment phase including bonding and developmental delays, as well as about why families chose to adopt from China, how they learned about the adoption agency they used and whether or not they knew families that had adopted internationally and more specifically from China. This information provided insight into the way that families obtained information that helped them reach important decisions throughout the adoption process. / Master of Science

The thesis considers the career of the Student Christian Movement (SCM) which was founded in 1892 to promote missions and to recruit students for missionary work. As it grew, the SCM extended its operations to the founding and servicing of Christian Unions in colleges and progressively abandoned its evangelical roots and come to play a major part in the development of liberalism and ecumenism. In the nineteen sixties it became more radical than liberal and developed an interest in Marxism and alternative life styles. The career of the conservative evangelical Inter-Varsity Fellowship (IVF), formed as a result of a number of schisms from SCM, is also charted. These two movement organisations are considered in the light of ideas derived from the sociology of social movements. In the Introduction a brief critical account of various dominant theories of social movement origination is presented and elements of an alternative, voluntaristic, and essentially processual account are advanced. The careers of SCM and IVF are used to suggest correctives to a number of theoretical insights that have been developed on the basis of an exaggeration of the division between stable society and social movement. Particular topics dealt with include the growth and spread of social movements, goal transformation, schism and decline. It is argued that the rapid rise of SCM can be understood as resulting from (a) the existence of a wealthy milieu which accepted the movement as legitimate and (b) the SCM's attitude towards its own purpose and ideology which was open and inclusive. This denominationalism allowed the SCM to utilise the resources of the milieu and to recruit rapidly. It also laid the foundation for an erosion of purpose and identity. Many of the problems that promoted the decline of the SCM were caused by the particular nature of its constituency, recruiting as it did among students and experiencing therefore a high membership turnover, but a full understanding of the contrast between the decline of SCM and the stability of lVF requires consideration of the ideologies that informed the two organisations. For this reason the final chapter is concerned with the reasons for the precariousness of liberal protestantism and the strength of conservative evangelicalism.

In 2002, Reginald Bibby surprisingly asserted that a renaissance of religion is, or soon will be taking place in Canada. However, the assertion clashes with the dominant belief based largely on Bibby’s accumulated data about Canadians’ religious beliefs and practices, that Canada is becoming an increasingly secularized society. Based on forty-two in-depth interviews, this dissertation tests the “renaissance thesis” and improves our grasp of how Canadians subjectively understand their religious involvements by comparing the views of active religious affiliates (those who identify with a religious group and attend religious services nearly every week) and marginal religious affiliates (those who identify with a religious group and attend religious services primarily on Christmas or Easter, or for rites of passage such as weddings and funerals). What explains their higher and lower levels of religious involvement, what is the likelihood that marginal affiliates could eventually become active affiliates, and how does this understanding help us to assess the degree of religiosity or secularity in Canada? I argue that active and marginal affiliates are distinct mainly because of their different experiences with the supernatural or their local congregation, and the social influences that either encourage or discourage involvement in a religious group. These conclusions emerge from a close examination and testing of fundamental principles in Rational Choice Theory, a theory currently popular in the sociology of religion and in Bibby’s ongoing analysis of religion in Canada. Contrary to Bibby’s prediction, there is little reason to believe that marginal affiliates will eventually become active affiliates, regardless of changes to the supply of religion in Canada. In general, marginal affiliates appear content with their current levels of religiosity. As a result, I think it is likely that we will witness continued secularization at the individual level in Canada, which if proven correct, could strain Canada’s civic fabric in the future.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 145-166). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.