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▪ Abstract  Findings from behavioral organization theory, behavioral decision theory, survey research, and experimental economics leave no doubt about the failure of rational choice as a descriptive model of human behavior. But this does not mean that people and their politics are irrational. Bounded rationality asserts that decision makers are intendedly rational; that is, they are goal-oriented and adaptive, but because of human cognitive and emotional architecture, they sometimes fail, occasionally in important decisions. Limits on rational adaptation are of two types: procedural limits, which limit how we go about making decisions, and substantive limits, which affect particular choices directly. Rational analysis in institutional contexts can serve as a standard for adaptive, goal-oriented human behavior. In relatively fixed task environments, such as asset markets or elections, we should be able to divide behavior into adaptive, goal-oriented behavior (that is, rational action) and behavior that is a consequence of processing limits, and we should then be able to measure the deviation. The extent of deviation is an empirical issue. These classes are mutually exclusive and exhaustive, and they may be examined empirically in situations in which actors make repeated similar choices.

Offering alternative models based on such concepts as satisficing (acceptance of viable choices that may not be the undiscoverable optimum) and bounded rationality (the limited extent to which rational calculation can direct human behavior), Simon shows concretely why more empirical research based on experiments and direct observation, rather than just statistical analysis of economic aggregates, is needed.

This paper attempts to explain the motivations of residential rental property investors in New Zealand in terms of the behavioural assumption of bounded rationality. Commencing with a rejection of the more standard neo‐classical economics view of rationality as an explanation of investment behaviour, the paper seeks to both examine the extent to which bounded rationality applies to the investment behaviour encountered and to elaborate on that behaviour. The discussion is underpinned by the findings of a postal survey of a large nationwide sample of private residential rental property owners, and is directly based on a study of a smaller sample of investors using in‐depth interview techniques. Qualitative analysis overlays the quantitative data, to enable better exploration of the constraints within which individual investors operate.

Bounded rationality provides a fundamental economic explanation for non-rational modes of behavior. These non-rational modes underlie both the erratic perturbations of entrepreneurship and the systematic waves of diffusion they initiate which in turn guarantee that the economy operates out of equilibrium. Continuing adjustments out of equilibrium are made possible by financial intermediation. They imply asymmetric changes in individual welfare. The markets for entrepreneurship, ownership and control that liberate creativity and boundedly rational decision-making, therefore, also lead inevitably to conflict among various social groups. Democratic mechanisms for correlating public and private interest that enlist the voluntary participation of agents who are sometimes made worse off in the continuing process of social transformation and which restore access to markets for those who lose is therefore an essential part of a modern economic system. The dialectical interaction among market al1ocations, non-market buffering and stabilizing institutions and democratic process is thus fundamental. Reforms that are based on this interaction achieve voluntary self-transformations. Those that do not, ultimately fall victim to involuntary forces.