Même si la récompense du « Prix Nobel » ne lui a pas été décerné à ce titre, Jean Tirole est l’auteur, avec Roland Bénabou, de plusieurs articles récents sur le « self-management ». Tirole et Bénabou y utilisent des modèles de « moi multiples » du même typeque ceux envisagés par Thomas Schelling il y a 30 ans, pour étudier les interactions entre les « selves » d’une même personne. Ces modèles montrent comment de telles interactions peuvent déboucher sur des problèmes d’incohérence temporelles ou, au contraire, comment un individu peut les prévenir.
Ces modèles, assez classiques sur un plan technique, sont très intéressants d’un point de vue philosophique et méthodologique, à la fois parce qu’ils interrogent le statut de l’économie comme discipline scientifique (vis à vis de la psychologie notamment) mais aussi parce qu’ils remettent en cause le lien entre économie positive et économie normative. C’est justement l’objet de mon dernier working paper « Bargaining in the Mind: The Significance of Multiple Selves Models for Positive and Normative Economics« . Voici l’abstract :
The rise of behavioral economics has contributed to make economics and psychology closer than they have ever been. One particular issue that has attracted much interest both by economists and psychologists is the problem of intertemporal inconsistency. Recent years have seen the development of several theoretical attempts to explain it, in particular through multiple selves models (MSM). MSM represent the intertemporal choices made by a same person as if they were made by a succession of distinct agents (the “selves”) endowed with their own preferences. In this paper, I make three related claims regarding the significance of MSM for positive and normative economics: 1) MSM are methodologically attractive for economists because they allow for the extension of major economic tools (e.g. game theory and bargaining theory) to new scientific issues; 2) MSM are explanatory relevant and credible for economists because they identify real behavioral patterns that help to account for significant empirical regularities; 3) MSM lead to a reconciliation problem between positive economics and the individualistic and welfarist foundations of normative economics. While the first two points actually reinforce the status of economics as a separate science, the third one emphasizes that MSM undermines the relationship between positive and normative economics. Therefore, economics needs a theory of personhood to preserve the linkage between its positive and normative sides. Three possibilities of reconciliation – respectively found in Parfit’s, Rawls’ and Sen’s writings – are examined.
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