Economics, Game Theory and Disability Studies

Abstract

This chapter analyses inclusive communities by applying economics, mainly microeconomics and game theory, to disability studies. First, we provide a brief overview of the basics of economics and the key concepts in game theory, including strategic complementarity and network externality, which not only make a departure from the standard price theory but also respond to some of the misguided criticisms against economics, particularly market fundamentalism and the supremacy of the rational agent in economic analysis. Economics affirms the modern view of a human being as an autonomous, rational decision maker. However, some, if not all economists, recognize that in the real world, there is no human being who has such cognitive/computational capacity; rather, human beings are actually influenced by their surrounding socio-cultural environments, and develop some boundedly rational behavior or blindly follow established conventions to resolve the many problems they face.