Winner of the 1978 Nobel Prize in economics, Simon (1916-2001) was a polymath who made major contributions to political science, management, cognitive psychology, and statistics; but this two-volume set comprises articles reprinted from such journals as the J. of Mathematical Psychology, J. of Economic Literature, and the American Economic Review on the contributions he made to economics. The selections were made by editor Peter E. Earl (business economics, U. of Queensland, Australia) who provides an introduction describing how Simon "sought to understand and model the processes by which decision-makers try to cope with problems in the face of bounded rationality . By this he meant a situation in which there is a mismatch between the scale of the task at hand and the decision-maker's information-processing and linguistic capabilities." Volume I contains 29 articles (published between 1962 and 1997) that give an overview of bounded rationality and discuss various aspects. In Volume II, 22 articles (published between 1951 and 1999) discuss the impact of Simon's thinking about bounded rationality and complexity on some of the major sub-disciplines of economics. Topics include industrial organization, law and economics, and ecological and public sector economics. The set is not indexed. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) - from Amzon