Improving behavioural economics

A neat new paper has appeared on SSRN from Owen Jones - Why Behavioral Economics Isn’t Better, and How it Could Be (HT: Emanuel Derman via Dennis Dittrich). My favourite part is below. As I have said many times before, giving a bias a name is not theory.

[S]aying that the endowment effect is caused by Loss Aversion, as a function of Prospect Theory, is like saying that human sexual behavior is caused by Abstinence Aversion, as a function of Lust Theory. The latter provides no intellectual or analytic purchase, none, on why sexual behavior exists. Similarly, Prospect Theory and Loss Aversion – as valuable as they may be in describing the endowment effect phenomena and their interrelationship to one another – provide no intellectual or analytic purchase, none at all, on why the endowment effect exists. …

[Y]ou can’t provide a satisfying causal explanation for a behavior by merely positing that it is caused by some psychological force that operates to cause it. That’s like saying that the orbits of planets around the sun are caused by the “orbit-causing force.” …

[L]oss aversion rests on no theoretical foundation. Nothing in it explains why, when people behave irrationally with respect to exchanges, they would deviate in a pattern, rather than randomly. Nor does it explain why, if any pattern emerges, it should have been loss aversion rather than gain aversion. Were those two outcomes equally likely? If not, why not?

Part of the solution provided by Jones, as reflected in much of his past work, rests in evolutionary theory.