How credible is neuroeconomics?

Using Vladimir M's heuristics for evaluating the soundness of the academic mainstream in unfamiliar fields...

1) Is there low-hanging fruit in the field, as in: interesting and doable research goals?

Yes. There are thousands of interesting and doable experiments that can be run on humans and other primates using fMRI, TMS, and optogenetics in order to measure activity in the parts of the brain involved in making decisions under uncertainty.

2) Is the field ideologically charged?

It doesn't seem that way to me. There are standard debates about mindful vs. mindless economics, but otherwise it's basically just figuring out how brains make decisions so we can predict human behavior better. Not too ideological.

A few other things to note:

a) the field is heavily integrated with data and literature in related fields like economics, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology, making use of all the latest results from those fields

b) the field originated in the major peer-reviewed journals in relevant fields, and has remained there (with the addition of new journals dedicated to neuroeconomics)

c) the field is led by respected academics at major universities like NYU, MIT, Duke, and GMU.

The major criticisms of the field come from economists who argue in favor of mindless economics. These economists don't claim that neuroeconomics is wrong, just that one can do economics without caring how human brains make decisions under uncertainty. Neuroeconomics hasn't been criticized much by neuroscientists or psychologists, as far as I know.

I doubt that there is a theory at all. I expect that it is just a bunch of experiments with just-so stories.

Controlled experiments show that pictures of brains make papers more credible.

Here is a PowerPoint with lots of info on neuroeconomics as a scientific discipline.

there is a review of the subject here

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1792628

and a less wrong summary here http://lesswrong.com/lw/5up/review_foundations_of_neuroeconomic_analysis/

looks interesting, something to keep an eye on

If neuroeconomists can produce better-than-normal economic predictions, they can easily bet on them and make large amounts of money. If they don't, the field probably isn't very useful. At best, it's coming up with a simpler model to explain what we already know.