A racionalidade no comportamento econômico: um estudo de caso baseado na economia comportamental

Abstract

The basis of economic theories are neoclassical ideas, which consider the principle of optimizing rationality of economic agents. However, people often do not necessarily act within these assumptions, as argued by Behavioral Economics and Mental Accounting. Based on this debate, the objective here was to study how agents consider economic rationality in their decisions, based on the behavior of students and employees of a higher education institution, through the application of a questionnaire based on the study by Shafir and Thaler ( 2006), which considered nine groups of questions with different themes applied to behavioral research. This was carried out from three aspects: theoretical-conceptual understanding and empirical contributions to the area; verification of the degree of rationality of the respondents, considering the neoclassical and behavioral views; and, analysis of the behavior of different groups in decision-making situations, to compare them (teachers, students and employees, and people with knowledge of the area of Economic Sciences, and people with knowledge in other areas). In terms of results, 489 responses were obtained, which were evaluated using descriptive statistics, frequency analysis and hypothesis tests. The studies that considered the framing effect obtained a high degree of decisions classified as rational, which suggests that this bias is not prevalent in the sample analyzed. However, studies that considered opportunity cost and the fallacy of sunk costs showed a greater degree of irrationality, which highlighted the absence of the principle of invariance. This indicates a disconnection between what is proposed by neoclassical theory and the actual behavior of individuals. Regarding the analysis by area of training and institutional link, it was evidenced that only in one study, which was related to the historical cost of non-monetary decisions, did present a distinction between the groups, specifically, in relation to their institutional link. And in relation to knowledge in the area of Economic Sciences, no influence was found on the responses in any of the studies, demonstrating that there is no distinction in decisions regarding rationality between the groups evaluated. This evidence suggests that decisions consider different aspects, both rational and behavioral, which is especially relevant due to the result that, even people with greater knowledge in certain areas, such as economics, present equally irrational behavior, and that economic theoretical-conceptual knowledge does not reduce behavioral influence.