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on Neuroeconomics |
| By: | Biggiero, Lucio |
| Abstract: | The substitution of knowledge to information as the entity that organizations process and deliver raises a number of questions concerning the nature of knowledge. The dispute on the codifiability of tacit knowledge and that juxtaposing the epistemology of practice vs. the epistemology of possession can be better faced by revisiting two crucial debates. One concerns the nature of cognition and the other the famous mind-body problem. Cognition can be associated with the capability of manipulating symbols, like in the traditional computational view of organizations, interpreting facts or symbols, like in the narrative approach to organization theory, or developing mental states (events), like argued by the growing field of organizational cognition. Applied to the study of organizations, the mind-body problem concerns the possibility (if any) and the forms in which organizational mental events, like trust, identity, cultures, etc., can be derived from the structural aspects (technological, cognitive or communication networks) of organizations. By siding in extreme opposite positions, the two epistemologies appear irreducible one another and pay its own inner consistency with remarkable difficulties in describing and explaining some empirical phenomena. Conversely, by legitimating the existence of both tacit and explicit knowledge, by emphasizing the space of human interactions, and by assuming that mental events can be explained with the structural aspects of organizations, Nonaka’s SECI model seems an interesting middle way between the two rival epistemologies. |
| Keywords: | cognition; emergent properties; knowledge; mental states; organization |
| JEL: | L20 |
| Date: | 2007–05–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:3089&r=neu |
| By: | Li-Wei Chao (Population Studies Department, University of Pennsylvania); Helena Szrek (CETE, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto); Nuno Sousa Pereira (CETE, Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto); Mark V. Pauly (Health Care Systems Department, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) |
| Abstract: | Although theories in both evolutionary biology and economics predict that an individual’s health should be associated with the individual’s time preference, no prior study has been done to empirically support or refute such predictions. By collecting detailed measures of health, time preference, and expected longevity on a sample of individuals in townships around Durban, South Africa, this study breaks new ground by being the first to analyze in detail the relationship between time preference and health, in an area of the world with high mortality and morbidity. Interestingly, we find that both physical health and expectations of longevity have a U-shaped relationship with the person’s subjective discount rate. This suggests that those in very poor health have high discount rates, but those in very good health also have high discount rates. Similarly those with longevity expectations on the extremes have high discount rates. The research question addressed by this pilot project is policy relevant, as the study tries to determine the importance of health in economic development, not from the commonly asserted productivity-gain argument, but from a much broader investment-for-the-future argument. |
| Keywords: | Subjective discount rate; Longevity; Health; Age |
| JEL: | I10 D90 |
| Date: | 2007–05 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:por:cetedp:0706&r=neu |