Arising out of the author’s lifetime fascination with the links
between the formal language of mathematical models and
natural language, this short book comprises five essays investi-
gating both the economics of language and the language of eco-
nomics. Ariel Rubinstein touches on the structure imposed on
binary relations in daily language, the evolutionary develop-
ment of the meaning of words, game-theoretical considerations
of pragmatics, the language of economic agents, and the rheto-
ric of game theory. These short essays are full of challenging
ideas for social scientists that should help to encourage a funda-
mental rethinking of many of the underlying assumptions in
economic theory and game theory. A postscript contains com-
ments by a logician, Johan van Benthem (University of
Amsterdam, Institute for Logic, Language and Computation
and Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and
Information) and two economists, Tilman Börgers (University
College, London) and Barton Lipman (University of Wisconsin,
Madison).
ARIEL RUBINSTEIN is Professor of Economics at Tel Aviv
University and Princeton University. His recent publications
include Modeling Bounded Rationality (1998), A Course in
Game Theory (with M. Osborne, 1994) and Bargaining and
Markets (with M. Osborne, 1990).
Economics and Language
Five Essays
THE CHURCHILL LECTURES IN ECONOMIC THEORY
Economics and
Language
Five Essays
ARIEL RUBINSTEIN
Tel Aviv University
Princeton University
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