Human Complex Systems

In the debate on peasant rationality, no one has asked whether peasants have the kinds of relatively complex formal models that rational calculation requires, and, if so, whether the use them and whether they produce the results they seem to predict. The answer is “yes” in all cases, and the models can be elicited and displayed as a computer spread-sheet. This paper provides and demonstrates such models from two farms in one area in eastern Maharashtra state, India, that readers can download and examine on their own.