Granularity in Economic Decision Making: An Interdisciplinary Review

Abstract

In this article, we attempt to provide a review of the idea of granularity in economic decision making. The review will cover the perspectives from different disciplines, including psychology, cognitive science, complex science, and behavioral and experimental economics. Milestones along this road will be reviewed and discussed, such as Barry Schwartz’s paradox of choice, George Miller’s magic number seven, Gerd Gingerenzer’s fast and frugal heuristics, and Richard Thaler’s nudges. Recent findings from human-subject experiments on the effects of granularity on decision making will also be reviewed, accompanied by various learning models frequently used in agent-based computational economics, such as reinforcement learning and evolutionary computation. These reviews are purported to advance our thinking on the long-ignored granularity in economics and the subsequent implications for public policy-making, such as retirement plans. It, of course, remains to be examined whether the good use of the idea of granularity can enhance the quality of decision making.