BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMICS: A METHODOLOGICAL NARRATIVE
The sphere of methodological analysis in economic sciences is much narrower than in the sciences of nature or historiography. This is especially true for the newly formed discipline and field of scientific knowledge called behavioural economics. The Nobel Prize 2018 awarded to the pioneer in the development of this area of economic knowledge Richard Thaler is a clear evidence of the growing influence of this tradition. The characteristic dominant motif of methodological interpretations of behavioural economics emphasizes its place at the intersection of economics and psychology. However, such statements are inadequate and therefore unproductive. The very reflection of economists connects this area of economics not with psychological behavioural reactions, but with the context of rationality in decision-making. Thus, the situation with behavioural economics requires turning not to psychology, but to epistemological analysis. The author examines the basic cognitive mechanisms that are shaping this field of research and demonstrates the applied nature of the knowledge produced by this new tradition. An example can be the Kahneman-Tversky value function emphasizing two important features of economic decisions: 1) people interpret income and expenses (gains and losses) asymmetrically, giving more weight to the costs when making decisions; 2) people first estimate individual events and then summarize these estimates. In addition to traditional behaviour, the Kahneman-Tversky value function explains a number of other typical cases of behaviour that seem to contradict the rational logic of choice. This paper substantiates the dominant nature of abstraction at the theoretical level of economics as a science and the dominant status of concretization in such scientific traditions as behavioural economics.