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(2014) Synthese 191 (11).

To specialize or to innovate?

an internalist account of pluralistic ignorance in economics

Rogier De Langhe

pp. 2499-2511

Academic and corporate research departments alike face a crucial dilemma: to exploit known frameworks or to explore new ones; to specialize or to innovate? Here I show that these two conflicting epistemic desiderata are sufficient to explain pluralistic ignorance and its boom-and-bust-like dynamics, exemplified in the collapse of the efficient markets hypothesis as a modern risk management paradigm in 2007. The internalist nature of this result, together with its robustness, suggests that pluralistic ignorance is an inherent feature rather than a threat to the rationality of epistemic communities.

Publication details

DOI: 10.1007/s11229-014-0436-z

Full citation:

De Langhe, R. (2014). To specialize or to innovate?: an internalist account of pluralistic ignorance in economics. Synthese 191 (11), pp. 2499-2511.

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