Models of inefficient political failure have been criticized for implicitly assuming the irrationality of voters. (Wittman 1999, 1995, 1989; Coate and Morris 1995) Building on Caplan's (1999a, 1999b) model of "rational irrationality," the current paper maintains that the assumption of voter irrationality is both theoretically and empirically plausible. It then examines microfoundational critici...

In this paper a new direct proof for the irrationality of Euler's number e = ∞ k=0 1 k! is presented. Furthermore, formulas for the base b digits are given which, however, are not computably effective. Finally we generalize our method and give a simple criterium for some fast converging series representing irrational numbers.

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Recent experiments on ants and slime moulds have assessed the degree to which they make rational decisions when presented with a number of alternative food sources or shelter. Ants and slime moulds are just two examples of a wide range of species and biological processes that use positive feedback mechanisms to reach decisions. Here we use a generic, experimentally validated model of positive f...

There is abundant evidence that many individuals violate the rationality assumptions routinely made in economics. However, powerful evidence also indicates that violations of individual rationality do not necessarily refute the aggregate predictions of standard economic models that assume full rationality of all agents. Thus, a key question is how the interactions between rational and irrationa...

In this paper, we describe how the hypergeometric method of Thue and Siegel may be applied to questions of irrationality. As a consequence of our approach, we provide a somewhat simple proof of a classical theorem of Ljunggren to the effect that the Diophantine equation x^ — 2y' = — 1 has only the solutions {x,y) = (1,1) and {x,y) = (239,13) in positive integers. Mathematics Subject Classificat...