Presented
by: Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Reinhard Selten
Summary
On September 10, 2006，the 11th seminar of Rhine Forum is honored to have
Prof.Dr. Reinhard Selten, winner of 1994 Nobel prize of economics as our
speaker on "Bounded Rationality".
The term "Bounded Rationality" is thought to have been coined by
Herbert Simon. In Models of My Life, Herbert Simon points out that
most people are only partly rational, and are in fact emotional/irrational in
the remaining part of their actions. In another work, he states "boundedly
rational agents experience limits in formulating and solving complex problems
and in processing (receiving, storing, retrieving, transmitting)
information". The concept is in contrast to complete rationality and there
are various sub-theories within it. One of these are discovered by Prof.Dr. Selten.
Starting with small examples such as"out of view, out of mind","framing effect"
the idea of bounded rationality is introduced. Next the larger scale problems
like competition of global coffee market and low interested rate of the USA
reveals the wide application of the concept. The last part of the talk
introduced theories like "prominence", "measure for measure".
Despite its pure theoretical nature, the topic has been related with daily
life in the presentation and therefore plain to most students.
Before the seminar Prof.Dr. Selten was interviewed by Deutsche Welle. In
answer to the question on why he comes to the Chinese student's forum, he
talked about his close collaborations with Chinese universities. Laboratories
and institutes in TongJi University, Southwest JiaoTong University, and Nankai
University have been founded and named after him. He regards Chinese students
as the major manpower in this cooperation and is glad to discuss with students
with different background.
After his report he joined the students for photos.
GENG Hong (English Version by WANG Yuan)
The Speaker
Prof.Dr.Dr. Reinhard Selten (October
5, 1930) is a
German
economist.
Selten was born in
Breslau (Wrocław)
in
Lower Silesia, now in
Poland. For
his work in
game
theory, Selten won the
1994
Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics (shared with
John Harsanyi and
John Nash). He is also well known for his work in
bounded rationality, and can be considered as one of the founding fathers
of
experimental economics. He developed an example of a game called
Selten's Horse because of its extensive form representation. He is noted
for his publishing in non-refereed journals to avoid being forced to make
unwanted changes to his work.
Linkes
Autobiography in official web site of the Nobel prize http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1994/selten-autobio.html
Introduction in Chinese
http://web.cenet.org.cn/web/
Updated: 2007-12-01
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