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2023-07-09

Simon HA. A behavioral model of rational choice. The quarterly journal of economics. 1955;69(1):99-118.

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Rationality - bounded

A landmark paper that shifted thinking away from the traditional models of economic decision-making through rational quantitative assessment of all the relevant factors, and towards the reality that we cannot possibly take into account and integrate all the myriad pieces of information. We therefore 'bound' our scope of attention and decision-making to fit our limited cognitive abilities. This 'satisficing' model applies wherever complex decisions involving many factors have to be made such as in specialist medicine. The resultant narrowing of attention is unavoidable but can result in sub optimal and uncoordinated decision making where several specialists have to work together

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