Comment on Tullock, Hechter, and Wildavsky

Eric Bennett Rasmusen, Kelley School of Business, Indiana University

Abstract

Game theory has been criticized as neglecting key aspects of individual behavior and as relying too heavily on special assumptions. It can, in fact, handle individual heterogeneity if the modeller is willing to carefully specify how people are different, but to the extent that such things as heterogeneity and culture are important, the desire for a single unified model is impossible to satisfy. At the same time, game theory's approach is very useful for building specialized models.