- Via di Villa Emiliani 14 , Roma
Massimo Egidi
LUISS Guido Carli, Political Science, Emeritus
- My main research interests are related to the study of bounded rational behaviour in organizations and institutions, ... moreMy main research interests are related to the study of bounded rational behaviour in organizations and institutions, as well as of organizational learning. Innovation and creativity in complex environments are correlated research interests. On these topics I have published since the 1990's around 100 papers, articles and book chapters. Academic positions: I am currently Professor Emeritus at Luiss University in Rome, where I teach Behavioral Economics and Psychology. I served as Rector of Luiss for ten years (October 2006 to October 2016). Before I served as Rector of University of Trento (from1996 to 2004) and I have been President of FBK - the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Trento, serving from December 2010 to December 2014.edit
In recent decades, the rapid emergence of new political leaders capturing growing social discontent with populist promises has highlighted elements of the internal fragility of democracy. Schumpeter predicts such fragility in Capitalism,... more
In recent decades, the rapid emergence of new political leaders capturing growing social discontent with populist promises has highlighted elements of the internal fragility of democracy. Schumpeter predicts such fragility in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, where, in analyzing thse "competitive struggle for the popular vote," he makes two assumptions that reverse the classical model of rational decision-making: the limited use of "conscious rationality" by voters and the potential unfairness of political leaders. These two elements introduce systematic distortions into the process of collective decision-making in democracy, suggesting a possible explanation for the rise of populism. Based on delegation, representative democracy must function despite the small amount of intellectual effort that most citizens put into forming their political opinions. Ideologies have historically functioned as implicit heuristics, allowing citizens to evaluate political facts, shape their expectations, and simplify political reasoning; as such, they have been the tools used by parties to give credibility to their programs while at the same time affiliating and polarizing the electorate. While they continue to serve as anchors for defining political identity, today's ideologies are fragmented and therefore less effective in supporting long-term programs and retaining voters; thus, keeping voters close to their political affiliation requires massive use of the media, and for emerging parties lacking strong identitarian values, a short-term political offer becomes less risky than formulating long-term political strategies. At the same time, the decline of classical ideologies makes any political commitment to long-term perspectives hardly credible to the electorate. This leads to an adverse selection process in which populist programs have a better chance of success than long-term policy programs. As a result, the role of the political leader as an entrepreneur is severely weakened. The competition for votes becomes unfair (since it is not based on the quality or plausibility of policy results), while at the same time the process of polarization disrupts the elements of mediation. The result is a process of democratic backsliding that can ultimately lead to a loss of trust in democracy.
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Research Interests: Psychology, Economics, Mathematical Economics, Decision Making, Rational Choice, and 15 moreBehavioral Economics, Bounded Rationality, Unconscious Mind, Rationality, Psychology and Economics, Standard Model, Normative, Cognitive Process, Empirical Study, Expected Utility Theory, Decision making process, Experimental, Empirical evidence, Storia Del Pensiero Economico, and Decision Maker
Different sources of uncertainty are analysed and a representation of decision-making in principle consistent with behavioural evidence is proposed. The endogenous emergence of... more
Different sources of uncertainty are analysed and a representation of decision-making in principle consistent with behavioural evidence is proposed. The endogenous emergence of "innovations," in the forms of unexpected events and novel behaviors is also examined.
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... Come vedremo, gli individui possono cadere in trappole cognitive a causa del processo di semplificazione insito nell'attività di editing mentale: per costruire una rappresentazio-ne di un problema, essi devono decomporlo... more
... Come vedremo, gli individui possono cadere in trappole cognitive a causa del processo di semplificazione insito nell'attività di editing mentale: per costruire una rappresentazio-ne di un problema, essi devono decomporlo in unità più semplici tra loro indipendenti. ...
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1 Discrepancies: competing theories and ideologies as cognitive traps The scientific discovery as puzzle-solving1 Massimo Egidi Introduction In some contexts, like for example complex games and puzzles, the search for solutions to problems... more
1 Discrepancies: competing theories and ideologies as cognitive traps The scientific discovery as puzzle-solving1 Massimo Egidi Introduction In some contexts, like for example complex games and puzzles, the search for solutions to problems leads to the discovery of different ...
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1.'What Does the" Proof" of an Economic Proposition Prove?'Kumaraswami Velupillai (Economics-Queens Univ., Belfast) 2.'As If Individuals Were Perfectly Rational: Some Theoretical and Methodological Lessons from... more
1.'What Does the" Proof" of an Economic Proposition Prove?'Kumaraswami Velupillai (Economics-Queens Univ., Belfast) 2.'As If Individuals Were Perfectly Rational: Some Theoretical and Methodological Lessons from the Laboratory'Massimo Egidi (Economics-...
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Different sources of uncertainty are analysed and a representation of decision-making in principle consistent with behavioural evidence is proposed. The endogenous emergence of "innovations", in the forms of unexpected events and novel... more
Different sources of uncertainty are analysed and a representation of decision-making in principle consistent with behavioural evidence is proposed. The endogenous emergence of "innovations", in the forms of unexpected events and novel behaviours is also examined.
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In recent decades, the rapid emergence of new political leaders capturing growing social discontent with populist promises has highlighted elements of the internal fragility of democracy. Schumpeter predicts such fragility in Capitalism,... more
In recent decades, the rapid emergence of new political leaders capturing growing social discontent with populist promises has highlighted elements of the internal fragility of democracy. Schumpeter predicts such fragility in Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, where, in analyzing thse "competitive struggle for the popular vote," he makes two assumptions that reverse the classical model of rational decision-making: the limited use of "conscious rationality" by voters and the potential unfairness of political leaders. These two elements introduce systematic distortions into the process of collective decision-making in democracy, suggesting a possible explanation for the rise of populism. Based on delegation, representative democracy must function despite the small amount of intellectual effort that most citizens put into forming their political opinions. Ideologies have historically functioned as implicit heuristics, allowing citizens to evaluate political facts, shape their expectations, and simplify political reasoning; as such, they have been the tools used by parties to give credibility to their programs while at the same time affiliating and polarizing the electorate. While they continue to serve as anchors for defining political identity, today's ideologies are fragmented and therefore less effective in supporting long-term programs and retaining voters; thus, keeping voters close to their political affiliation requires massive use of the media, and for emerging parties lacking strong identitarian values, a short-term political offer becomes less risky than formulating long-term political strategies. At the same time, the decline of classical ideologies makes any political commitment to long-term perspectives hardly credible to the electorate. This leads to an adverse selection process in which populist programs have a better chance of success than long-term policy programs. As a result, the role of the political leader as an entrepreneur is severely weakened. The competition for votes becomes unfair (since it is not based on the quality or plausibility of policy results), while at the same time the process of polarization disrupts the elements of mediation. The result is a process of democratic backsliding that can ultimately lead to a loss of trust in democracy.
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In recent years various theoretical contributions have taken up the economic analysis of training by introducing substantial innovations with respect to Becker's original model. In the case of a perfectly competitive labour... more
In recent years various theoretical contributions have taken up the economic analysis of training by introducing substantial innovations with respect to Becker's original model. In the case of a perfectly competitive labour market, where completely general skills, perfect labour ...
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The paper investigates the cognitive determinants of routinization and creativity by means of a lab-in-the-field experiment run at the 20th edition of a mass gathering festival in Italy (“La Notte della Taranta”). Subjects play repeatedly... more
The paper investigates the cognitive determinants of routinization and creativity by means of a lab-in-the-field experiment run at the 20th edition of a mass gathering festival in Italy (“La Notte della Taranta”). Subjects play repeatedly the puzzle version of the Target-The-Two game (32 hands). In hands 1-16, the strategy that is optimal given the card distribution is always the same and it is the easiest to be discovered. Conversely, in hands 17-32, subjects are exposed to games where the optimal contextual strategy may differ from the one with which they have been made familiar. We investigate whether and how, in hands 17-32, subjects remain routinized on the familiar strategy, or creatively choose a different one. We define as “experts” those subjects who played the optimal contextual strategy in the overwhelming majority of hands 1-16. In hands 17-32, we find several subjects playing the familiar strategy even when it is not the optimal one, regardless of whether they are exper...
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This paper builds upon a view of economic organizations as problemsolving arrangements and presents a simple model of adaptive problemsolving driven by trial-and-error learning and collective selection. Institutional structures, and in... more
This paper builds upon a view of economic organizations as problemsolving arrangements and presents a simple model of adaptive problemsolving driven by trial-and-error learning and collective selection. Institutional structures, and in particular their degree of decentralization, determines which solutions are tried out and undergo selection. It is shown that if the design problem at hand is “complex ” (in term of interdependencies between the elements of the system), then a decentralized institutional structure is very unlikely to ever generate optimal solutions and therefore no selection process can ever select them. We also show that nearly-decomposable structures have in general a selective advantage in terms of speed in reaching good locally optimal solutions.
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1 Discrepancies: competing theories and ideologies as cognitive traps The scientific discovery as puzzle-solving1 Massimo Egidi Introduction In some contexts, like for example complex games and puzzles, the search for solutions to problems... more
1 Discrepancies: competing theories and ideologies as cognitive traps The scientific discovery as puzzle-solving1 Massimo Egidi Introduction In some contexts, like for example complex games and puzzles, the search for solutions to problems leads to the discovery of different ...
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From experiment based on a card game developed by Michael Cohen and Bacdayan ( “Target The Two”), it is shown that stable sub-optimal routinized behaviors in game playing emerged and offered clear evidence that individuals, having... more
From experiment based on a card game developed by Michael Cohen and Bacdayan ( “Target The Two”), it is shown that stable sub-optimal routinized behaviors in game playing emerged and offered clear evidence that individuals, having discovered a solution of a problem in a limited domain, try to make use of the same solution beyond the original domain. This phenomenon has been previously analyzed in a particular setting by Luchins: individuals remain locked into the procedure they have learnt, without reacting to new instances of the problem even when a new and better solution is evidently available (“mechanization of tought” ).
Going beyond Luchins’ findings , Egidi shows that the mechanization of thought is originated by a mis-categorization of the problem One of the findings of the experiments on “Target The Two” has been to elicit the elements that in a team trigger exploration of new solutions instead of the exploitation of the old ones, in line with James March’ analysis of organizational change. If individuals, having discovered a style of cooperation in a limited domain, try to make use of the same beyond the original domain, they are in a sense “averse to innovate”. Aversion to innovation may vary in alternative organizational context : a different balance between exploration of new solutions and exploitation of the old ones may characterize organizations as James March’ analysis suggested. The experiments suggest that teams and individuals may have different propensity to innovate and to risk, depending upon their representation of the organizational context and upon the learning process that led them to a routinized behavior.
Going beyond Luchins’ findings , Egidi shows that the mechanization of thought is originated by a mis-categorization of the problem One of the findings of the experiments on “Target The Two” has been to elicit the elements that in a team trigger exploration of new solutions instead of the exploitation of the old ones, in line with James March’ analysis of organizational change. If individuals, having discovered a style of cooperation in a limited domain, try to make use of the same beyond the original domain, they are in a sense “averse to innovate”. Aversion to innovation may vary in alternative organizational context : a different balance between exploration of new solutions and exploitation of the old ones may characterize organizations as James March’ analysis suggested. The experiments suggest that teams and individuals may have different propensity to innovate and to risk, depending upon their representation of the organizational context and upon the learning process that led them to a routinized behavior.