Hamid Hosseini, . "George Katona: A founding father of old behavioral economics." The Journal of Socio-Economics 40.6 (2011): 977-984.
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Assuming the division of behavioral economics into old and new, the paper begins to argue that old behavioral economics began with the works of two giants – George Katona and Herbert Simon during the 1950s and early 1960s. The contributors of Herbert Simon are well established, thanks to the popularity of bounded rationality and satisficing, and his being award Noble Prize in economics. However, economists are much less familiar with the contributions of George Katona that can be viewed as the father of behavioral economics... Katona was also misunderstood by various economists when he was attempting to create a psychologically based economics that rejected the mechanistic psychology of neoclassical economics and introducing the survey method to economic research that he had been using in his experimental psychology research previously. He also had influenced various economists during their debates in the 1950s without given the credit for. Many historians of behavioral economics limit Katona's contributions to the start of behavioral economics only to his contributions to macroeconomics. However... Katona's behavioral economics included his contributions to macroeconomics (bringing realism to Keynesian consumption function and consumption behavior), micro-economics (business behavior, the rationality assumption, etc.), public finance and economic policy, and his introduction of the survey method... Katona attempted to bring realism to economic analysis – through psychological concepts – beginning with his early days of research in Germany which coincided with German hyper inflation- and continued whether working at New school for Social Research, Chicago University's Cowles Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center.

— Hamid Hosseini

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Assuming the division of behavioral economics into old and new, the paper begins to argue that old behavioral economics began with the works of two giants – George Katona and Herbert Simon during the 1950s and early 1960s. The contributors of Herbert Simon are well established, thanks to the popularity of bounded rationality and satisficing, and his being award Noble Prize in economics. However, economists are much less familiar with the contributions of George Katona that can be viewed as the father of behavioral economics... Katona was also misunderstood by various economists when he was attempting to create a psychologically based economics that rejected the mechanistic psychology of neoclassical economics and introducing the survey method to economic research that he had been using in his experimental psychology research previously. He also had influenced various economists during their debates in the 1950s without given the credit for. Many historians of behavioral economics limit Katona's contributions to the start of behavioral economics only to his contributions to macroeconomics. However... Katona's behavioral economics included his contributions to macroeconomics (bringing realism to Keynesian consumption function and consumption behavior), micro-economics (business behavior, the rationality assumption, etc.), public finance and economic policy, and his introduction of the survey method... Katona attempted to bring realism to economic analysis – through psychological concepts – beginning with his early days of research in Germany which coincided with German hyper inflation- and continued whether working at New school for Social Research, Chicago University's Cowles Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center." in the context of "Hamid Hosseini, . "George Katona: A founding father of old behavioral economics." The Journal of Socio-Economics 40.6 (2011): 977-984." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "George Katona" (Quotes about George Katona) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

About George Katona

George Katona (Nov. 6, 1901, June 18, 1981) was a Hungarian-born American psychologist, and Professor at the University of Michigan, who was one of the first to advocate a rapprochement between economics and psychologists. He is known as one of the founding fathers of old behavioral economics.