August 12, 2019
Anne I. Harrington and Jeffrey Knopf
Jeffrey W. Knopf, a CNS Research Affiliate and Professor of Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies at MIIS, and Anne I. Harrington, a former CNS post-doctoral fellow, have co-edited a new book on Behavioral Economics and Nuclear Weapons published by University of Georgia Press.
Behavioral economics has drawn on insights from psychology, neuroscience, and other fields to develop a critique of standard models of rationality in mainstream economics and to show how human decision making often deviates in systematic ways from the predictions of rational actor models.
Harrington and Knopf invited an interdisciplinary group of scholars to explore the implications of the findings that inform behavioral economics for issues related to nuclear weapons policies. Chapters in the book address topics ranging from deterrence to the nuclear nonproliferation regime to how people evaluate prospective technologies for ballistic missile defense. Chapters by Harrington and Knopf also assess the potential limitations of applying a behavioral economics framework to nuclear weapons policy.
