| Robert Sugden | |
| School Tradition: | Cognitive & Behavioural Economics |
| Birth Date: | 26 August 1949 |
| Nationality: | British |
| Institution: | University of East Anglia, Norwich |
| Field: | Microeconomics |
| Alma Mater: | University of York, UK |
| Influences: | Harsanyi, Rawls, Smith, Hume, Mill, and Hayek |
| Contributions: | welfare economics, social choice, decision theory, evolutionary social theory, regret theory |
| Repec Prefix: | e |
| Repec Id: | psu169 |
Robert Sugden, FBA (born 26 August 1949) is an English author in the area of cognitive and behavioural economics. Professor Sugden's research combines game theory (mainly experimental game theory and coordination games) with moral and political philosophy. He is associated with the classical-liberal tradition of Hume, Mill, and Hayek.
In his most cited work, Sugden explored how conventions of property, mutual aid, and voluntary supply of public goods can evolve spontaneously out of the interactions of self-interested individuals and can become moral norms.[1]
Sugden investigated a number of violations of the von Neumann and Morgenstern's expected utility axioms, and developed regret theory as an alternative with Graham Loomes. In support of this work, he developed a number of experimental methods to test theories of decision under risk.[2]
His work also deals with economic methods, in which he argues that economic models are not abstractions from, or simplifications of, the real world, but rather descriptions of imaginary worlds whose validity can only be inferred by how reasonable their predictions are.[3]
In The Community of Advantage, Sugden develops a contractarian approach to welfare economics that is based on opportunity sets and not individual preferences.[4] The shift from preferences to opportunity is partly motivated by recent experimental work indicating that individuals lack well-defined preferences. In 2019, The Community of Advantage was awarded the Joseph B. Gittler Award for outstanding contribution in the field of the philosophy of the social sciences.[5]