Great article from Shiller on neuroeconomics.  The more justification, and more positive side, of neuroeconomics is mentioned here:

Under Samuelson’s guidance, generations of economists have based their research not on any physical structure underlying thought and behavior, but only on the assumption of rationality.

As a result, Glimcher is skeptical of prevailing economic theory, and is seeking a physical basis for it in the brain. He wants to transform “soft” utility theory into “hard” utility theory by discovering the brain mechanisms that underlie it.

This is cool.  Economists want to be reductionist, but we were unable to boil down our theory quite far enough and had to settle on some underlying assumptions of human nature – assumption that were based on “conducting experiments in our own heads”.  Neuroeconomics provides a route for us to actually push the ontological envelope and create a more objective, mechanistic, way to describe the underlying elements of human action.

However, the risk is that we allow this view to cloud our thinking on choice – no matter how far neuroeconomics evolves we will never clearly decipher whether actions are the result of determinism or free will.  By describing action in a deterministic way, we may treat human action as “too deterministic”, leading to a bias towards excessive control and meddling.