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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.

Democratic simple majority voting is perhaps the most widely used method of group decision making in our time. Current theory, based on instability theorems, predicts that a group employing this method will almost always fail to reach a stable conclusion. There is one case that the classical instability theorems do not treat: an even number of voters in 2 dimensions. We resolve this remaining case, proving that instability occurs with probability converging rapidly to 1 as the population increases. But empirical observations do not support the gloomy predictions of the instability theorems. We show that the instability theorems are themselves unstable in the following sense: if the model of voter behavior is altered however slightly to incorporate any of several plausible characteristics of decision-making, then the instability theorems do not hold and in fact the probability of stability converges to 1 as the population increases, when the population is sampled from a centered distribution. The assumptions considered are: a cost of change; bounded rationality; perceptual thresholds; a cost of uncertainty; a discrete proposal space, and others. One consequence of this work is to render precise and rigorous the solution proposed by Tullock (63,64) and refined by Arrow (2) to the impossibility problem. The stability results all hold for arbitrary dimension, and generalize to establish a tradeoff between the characteristics and the degree of noncenteredness of a population. As a by-product of the analysis, we establish the statistical consistency of the sample yolk radius ; National Research Council and National Science Foundation ; http://archive.org/details/instabilityofins00tove ; OM&N Direct Funding ; NA ; Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.

Rational choice-Erklärungen zählen konsistente Präferenzen und eindeutige Informationen zu den Standard-Voraussetzungen erfolgreichen Handelns. Ihnen entspricht eine hinreichend kalkulierbare Handlungsumwelt, die aber nur ausnahmsweise gegeben ist. Reale Handlungswelten sind oft unsicher, veränderlich und nur ungenügend verstehbar. In ihnen neigen sowohl Individuen als auch Organisationen dazu, strategische Ambitionen zugunsten der größeren Sicherheit des regelkonformen bzw. adaptiven Handelns aufzugeben. Die Prämissen beschränkt rationalen Entscheidens zwingen die Akteure aber nur insoweit zu einer drastischen Anspruchsreduktion, wie sie am unitarischen Akteurkonzept festhalten. Eine empirische Alternative hierzu ist, daß Akteure durch die simultane Bezugnahme auf mehrere, nicht-integrierte Orientierungssysteme ihre Umweltsensibilität und strategische Kompetenz verbessern. Solche Multiple Selves machen von den Vorteilen der parallelen Informationsverarbeitung Gebrauch und vermögen, sofern sie über ausreichend Slack und Ambiguitätstoleranz verfügen, ein deutlich höheres Strategieniveau zu realisieren als wohlintegrierte Mono-Referenten. ; Both rational choice explanations and normative political theory assume that intended outcomes were the fruits of an integrated conception of the world as well as of a consistent preference ordering among the actors involved. If, however, parameters and causal relationships of the world are uncertain, changing and not fully comprehensible, requisite preconditions of well informed strategic action are not fulfilled. Under these circumstances, individual as well as organizational actors are restricted to myopic adaptions to local environments or to ways of behaviour that are guided by rules and traditions. Drawing on insights from research on bounded rationality, the paper demonstrates that strategic performance may nevertheless be improved if actors allow for less integrated conceptions of the world, i.e. conceptions that usually are regarded as a kind of pathology. Examples are given of organizations with multiple self structures that make use of the advantage of parallel information processing. With additional requirements, such as slack and tolerance for ambiguity, higher levels of attention to environmental change and, thus, of strategic competence may be reached.

This dissertation investigates the question of whether political influence in the business sector is distributed disproportionately among firms in a manner which favors large economic units. The factors which are likely to be sources of variation in the market for political influence faced by economic units of different sizes are isolated and studied. Relying upon pre-existing research by scholars in the area of public choice, a production cost function for legislative political influence is developed. It is demonstrated that supply conditions are likely to vary between corporate units of different sizes favoring small firms. An analysis of the demand for political influence is then presented in which government is treated as an intermediate input in the firm's production function. It is argued that forms of influence may not only serve to alter a firm's cost and demand conditions, but that the economic unit may also enjoy a reduction in the bounded rationality problems which it faces.These internal transactions costs are not generally reduced to a significant degree when influence is produced for the large firm because of the non-durable nature of legislation created for conspicuous corporate units. Thus, the value of the marginal product of political influence is inversely related to firm size. The analysis is then subjected to empirical testing. The results suggest that political influence and regulated firm size are positive and disproportionately related. Across unregulated firms a proportional relationship appears to exist. Finally, the policy implication of the results are explored. The conclusions suggest that policy implemented to reduce the extent of special interest legislation for business by limiting the growth of firms may not only be unsuccessful, but will likely lead to serious market distortions. ; Ph. D.