Jonathan Andreas, assistant professor of economics, will present "The Cardinalist Manifesto: How measurement theory shaped the ethics of economics," 4 p.m., Friday, Jan. 29, in Stutzman Lecture Hall in Centennial Hall as part of Bluffton University's Friday Colloquium Series. The event is free and open to the public.
Andreas will be talking about how utility theory in economics has been incorrectly using measurement theory. His colloquium is based on his dissertation topic in which he developed a simple theory for explaining why people choose to stop consuming some goods as people get richer (inferior goods).
"This all may sound complicated," says Andreas. "But it actually involves fairly simple concepts and it has more cross-disciplinary interest than most economics research. It is a narrative of intellectual history which shows the sociological (rather than purely scientific) motivations for fighting the ordinal revolution and it involves some very basic measurement theory that is familiar to disciplines like geology, physics and psychology."
