Decision making in uncertain times: what can cognitive and decision sciences say about or learn from economic crises?

Economic crises bring to the fore deep issues for the economic profession and their models. Given that cognitive science shares with economics many theoretical frameworks and research tools designed to understand decision-making behavior, should economists be the only ones re-examining their conceptual ideas and empirical methods? We argue that economic crises demonstrate different forms of uncertainty, which remind cognitive scientists of a pervasive problem: how best to conceptualize and study decision making under uncertainty.

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