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Decision Making as Output and Bounded Rationality

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  The classical economics theories proceed on the assumption of rational agents. Rationality implies the economic agents undertake actions or exercise choices based on the cost-benefit analysis they undertake. The assumption further posits that there exists no information asymmetry and thus the agent is aware of all the costs and benefits associated with the choice he or she has exercised. The behavioral school contested the decision stating the decisions in practice are often irrational. Implied there is a continuous departure from rationality. Rationality in the views of the behavioral school is more an exception to the norm rather a rule. The past posts have discussed the limitations of this view by the behavioral school. Economics has often posited rationality in the context in which the choices are exercised rather than theoretical abstract view of rational action. Rational action in theory seems to be grounded in zero restraint situation yet in practice, there are numerous restra
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Economics of Conflicting Dietary Preferences

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  The world is by and large consumers of meat and related products as part of their diet. Humans from time immemorial are omnivores. The notion of vegetarian food is something fairly recent in human history, perhaps with the advent of the settled life and agricultural civilization. Geography has determined food preferences and thus in large parts of the world agriculture was not possible till fairly recent centuries in history. This meant the option was animal food for survival. Wild fruits or nuts or even honey might have been discovered millennia ago and formed part of the human diet thus enabling it to accommodate to the omnivorous diet. This also perhaps helped in rapid adoption of vegetarianism as diet preferences in agrarian societies. Yet in history the notion of vegetarianism is about minorities rather than of the majority. Till date, most humans eat animal food as their choice rather than vegetarian. However, choice of animal based food is not exclusive of vegetarian choices.
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The Story of Indian Food

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  There was an interesting article appearing here on the origins of the popular Indian breakfast the dosa. It goes without saying that Indian food has origins in perhaps most unexpected of the places. The article seems to posit the origins of dosa in Bidar district of Karnataka or at least the recipes were described by the rulers there almost a thousand years ago. It is common knowledge that dosa perhaps originated in the Tamil country but this puts a new theory to play. In this context, it would be interesting to examine book “The Story of our Food” by K T Achaya published by Universities Press (2000). The author does trace the story of our Indian dining table to the Harappan civilization. While the author does add credence to some myths on contributions of others especially the Islamic rulers and the Arab world to the Indian cuisine, the book does touch upon interesting pointers that drove innovation in the Indian kitchen. Therefore, an examination of this short book might well give
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