Behavioral economics, gender economics, and feminist economics: friends or foes?

Abstract

ABSTRACTBehavioral economics may be considered as neoclassical behavioral economics (or ‘as-if’ behavioral economics), which adopts a neoclassical normative model of rationality and explains bias and mistakes as deviations from that model, or it could be envisioned as ‘smart behavioral economics’ that rejects standard rationality of neoclassical economics and adopts ecological rationality to explain that simple strategies, when adapted to the environment, will produce clever decisions. While, feminist economics fully rejects neoclassical economics model of rationality as a determining factor for the development of patriarchy, and adopts a more complex cognitive approach, gender economics adopts the rational choice framework as a consistent model to describe gendered phenomena. The aim of this paper therefore is to demonstrate that the concept of rationality adopted by ‘smart’ behavioral economics makes it consistent with feminist economics, while the concept of rationality adopted by ‘as-if’ behavioral economics makes it consistent with gender economics.