# Mental Models of Causal Structure in Economics and Psychology: A Review

Authors: Sandro Ambuehl; Rahul Bhui; Heidi C. Thysen
Venue: Invited by Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics
Year: 2026
Source: https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.29070
PDF: https://sandroambuehl.com/assets/papers/mental-models-causal-structure.pdf
Plain text version: https://sandroambuehl.com/assets/plain-text/mental-models-causal-structure.tex
LaTeX source bundle: https://sandroambuehl.com/assets/plain-text/mental-models-causal-structure.tex

## Abstract

A burgeoning literature in economics studies how people form beliefs about the causal structures linking economic variables, and what happens when those beliefs are mistaken. We survey this research and connect it to a rich literature in cognitive science.
After providing an accessible introduction to causal Directed Acyclic Graphs, the dominant modeling approach, we review theory and evidence addressing three nested questions: how individuals reason within a fully parameterized causal structure, how they estimate its parameters, and how they learn such structures to begin with.

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