Author : John B Davis
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 10,93 MB
Release : 2003-03-20
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1134633467
The concept of the individual and his/her motivations is a bedrock of philosophy. All strands of thought at heart come down to a particular theory of the individual. Economics, though, is guilty of taking this hugely important concept without questioning how we theorise it. This superb book remedies this oversight.The new approach put forward by Da
Author : Gary S. Becker
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 12,28 MB
Release : 2013-02-06
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 022621706X
Since his pioneering application of economic analysis to racial discrimination, Gary S. Becker has shown that an economic approach can provide a unified framework for understanding all human behavior. In a highly readable selection of essays Becker applies this approach to various aspects of human activity, including social interactions; crime and punishment; marriage, fertility, and the family; and "irrational" behavior. "Becker's highly regarded work in economics is most notable in the imaginative application of 'the economic approach' to a surprising breadth of human activity. Becker's essays over the years have inevitably inspired a surge of research activity in testimony to the richness of his insights into human activities lying 'outside' the traditionally conceived economic markets. Perhaps no economist in our time has contributed more to expanding the area of interest to economists than Becker, and a number of these thought-provoking essays are collected in this book."—Choice Gary Becker was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Science in 1992.
Author : Alan Kirman
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 366 pages
File Size : 41,95 MB
Release : 2010-09-13
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1136941673
The economic crisis is also a crisis for economic theory. Most analyses of the evolution of the crisis invoke three themes, contagion, networks and trust, yet none of these play a major role in standard macroeconomic models. What is needed is a theory in which these aspects are central. The direct interaction between individuals, firms and banks does not simply produce imperfections in the functioning of the economy but is the very basis of the functioning of a modern economy. This book suggests a way of analysing the economy which takes this point of view. The economy should be considered as a complex adaptive system in which the agents constantly react to, influence and are influenced by, the other individuals in the economy. In such systems which are familiar from statistical physics and biology for example, the behaviour of the aggregate cannot be deduced from the behaviour of the average, or "representative" individual. Just as the organised activity of an ants’ nest cannot be understood from the behaviour of a "representative ant" so macroeconomic phenomena should not be assimilated to those associated with the "representative agent". This book provides examples where this can clearly be seen. The examples range from Schelling’s model of segregation, to contributions to public goods, the evolution of buyer seller relations in fish markets, to financial models based on the foraging behaviour of ants. The message of the book is that coordination rather than efficiency is the central problem in economics. How do the myriads of individual choices and decisions come to be coordinated? How does the economy or a market, "self organise" and how does this sometimes result in major upheavals, or to use the phrase from physics, "phase transitions"? The sort of system described in this book is not in equilibrium in the standard sense, it is constantly changing and moving from state to state and its very structure is always being modified. The economy is not a ship sailing on a well-defined trajectory which occasionally gets knocked off course. It is more like the slime described in the book "emergence", constantly reorganising itself so as to slide collectively in directions which are neither understood nor necessarily desired by its components.
Author : John B. Davis
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 270 pages
File Size : 48,22 MB
Release : 2010-09-30
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 9780521173537
This book examines the different conceptions of the individual that have emerged in recent new approaches in economics, including behavioral economics, experimental economics, social preferences approaches, game theory, neuroeconomics, evolutionary and complexity economics, and the capability approach. These conceptions are classified according to whether they seek to revise the traditional atomist individual conception, put new emphasis on interaction and relations between individuals, account for individuals as evolving and self-organizing, and explain individuals in terms of capabilities. The method of analysis uses two identity criteria for distinguishing and re-identifying individuals to determine whether these different individual conceptions successfully identify individuals. Successful individual conceptions account for sub-personal and supra-personal bounds on single individual explanations. The former concerns the fragmentation of individuals into multiple selves; the latter concerns the dissolution of individuals into the social. The book develops an understanding of bounded individuality, seen as central to the defense of human rights.
Author : John McNerney
Publisher :
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 48,56 MB
Release : 2016
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781498229951
Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century initiated a great debate not just about inequality but also regarding the failures found in the economic models used by theoreticians and practitioners alike. Wealth of Persons offers a totally different perspective that challenges the very terms of the debate. The Great Recession reveals a great existential rift at the core of certain economic reflections, thereby showing the real crisis of the crisis of economics. In the human sciences we have created a kind of "Tower of Babel" where we cannot understand each other any longer. The "breakdowns" occur equally on the personal, social, political, and economic levels. There is a need for an "about-face" in method to restore harmony among dissociated disciplines. Wealth of Persons offers a key to such a restoration, applying insights and analysis taken from different economic scholars, schools of thought, philosophical traditions, various disciplines, and charismatic entrepreneurs. Wealth of Persons aims at recapturing an adequate understanding of the acting human person in the economic drama, one that measures up to the reality. The investigation is a passport allowing entry into the land of economic knowledge, properly unfolding the anthropological meaning of the free economy. "John McNerney's Wealth of Persons is an amazing tour de force--his focus on the human person in economics not only opens up economics for the nonprofessional economist, it's a bracing exposition of the philosophy of the human person, all the more impressive when seen immersed in economic action. By focusing on the Austrian and the later Bologna schools' insistence on the role of the entrepreneur he critiques, on the one hand, an economy overfocused on profit and, on the other, Marx's (and later Piketty's) misreading of economics as a struggle between capital and labor. It should be required reading for all students (and teachers) of economics as well as of applied philosophical anthropology." --Brendan Purcell, Adjunct Professor at the School of Philosophy and Theology, University of Notre Dame Australia, Sydney "This book is a welcome addition to the field of Catholic social teachings and more generally to the debate over the use of economics and its limits . . . The author aims to explain the 'crisis' in economics and in the economy without blaming the usual suspects, especially human greed. This research program is sorely needed, especially coming from someone outside of the field of economics." --Frederic Sautet, Associate Professor of Economics at the Catholic University of America "McNerney . . . is not afraid to suggest that theological and metaphysical issues are needed to put the right limits on economics. And he shows how this might be done without undermining the integrity of the discipline itself--indeed, how such issues flow out of the discipline and its activities among real persons] acting together . . . What McNerney is really getting at is a placing of economics in its true place, with the realization that the acting person also has a transcendent destiny that is really why he is doing anything at all in the first place, as Augustine said." --Professor James V. Schall, Retired Professor of Political Philosophy in the Department of Government at Georgetown University John McNerney is head chaplain at University College Dublin. Author of John Paul II: Poet and Philosopher (2004), he is also an occasional lecturer to undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of business ethics and philosophy. He has given talks at various international conferences in North America, Europe, and Asia, and is a member of the national Economy of Communion commission in Ireland.
Author : Julie A. Nelson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 38,20 MB
Release : 2018-12-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 022646394X
At its core, an economy is about providing goods and services for human well-being. But many economists and critics preach that an economy is something far different: a cold and heartless system that operates outside of human control. In this impassioned and perceptive work, Julie A. Nelson asks a compelling question: given that our economic world is something that we as humans create, aren’t ethics and human relationships—dimensions of a full and rich life—intrinsically part of the picture? Economics for Humans argues against the well-ingrained notion that economics is immune to moral values and distant from human relationships. Here, Nelson locates the impediment to a more considerate economic world in an assumption that is shared by both neoliberals and the political left. Despite their seemingly insurmountable differences, both make use of the metaphor, first proposed by Adam Smith, that the economy is a machine. This pervasive idea, Nelson argues, has blinded us to the qualities that make us work and care for one another—qualities that also make businesses thrive and markets grow. We can wed our interest in money with our justifiable concerns about ethics and social well-being. And we can do so if we recognize that an economy is not a machine, but a living thing in need of attention and careful tending. This second edition has been updated and refined throughout, with expanded discussions of many topics and a new chapter that investigates the apparent conflict between economic well-being and ecological sustainability. Further developing the main points of the first edition, Economics for Humans will continue to both invigorate and inspire readers to reshape the way they view the economy, its possibilities, and their place within it.
Author : Richard H. Thaler
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Page : 502 pages
File Size : 47,38 MB
Release : 2015-05-11
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0393246779
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics Get ready to change the way you think about economics. Nobel laureate Richard H. Thaler has spent his career studying the radical notion that the central agents in the economy are humans—predictable, error-prone individuals. Misbehaving is his arresting, frequently hilarious account of the struggle to bring an academic discipline back down to earth—and change the way we think about economics, ourselves, and our world. Traditional economics assumes rational actors. Early in his research, Thaler realized these Spock-like automatons were nothing like real people. Whether buying a clock radio, selling basketball tickets, or applying for a mortgage, we all succumb to biases and make decisions that deviate from the standards of rationality assumed by economists. In other words, we misbehave. More importantly, our misbehavior has serious consequences. Dismissed at first by economists as an amusing sideshow, the study of human miscalculations and their effects on markets now drives efforts to make better decisions in our lives, our businesses, and our governments. Coupling recent discoveries in human psychology with a practical understanding of incentives and market behavior, Thaler enlightens readers about how to make smarter decisions in an increasingly mystifying world. He reveals how behavioral economic analysis opens up new ways to look at everything from household finance to assigning faculty offices in a new building, to TV game shows, the NFL draft, and businesses like Uber. Laced with antic stories of Thaler’s spirited battles with the bastions of traditional economic thinking, Misbehaving is a singular look into profound human foibles. When economics meets psychology, the implications for individuals, managers, and policy makers are both profound and entertaining. Shortlisted for the Financial Times & McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award
Author : F. A. Hayek
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
Page : 281 pages
File Size : 12,98 MB
Release : 2012-12-01
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 0226321215
“These essays . . . bring great learning and . . . intelligence to bear upon economic and social issues of central importance to our era.” —Henry Hazlitt, Newsweek In this collection of writings, Nobel laureate Friedrich A. Hayek discusses topics from moral philosophy and the methods of the social sciences to economic theory as different aspects of the same central issue: free markets versus socialist planned economies. First published in the 1930s and 40s, these essays continue to illuminate the problems faced by developing and formerly socialist countries. F. A. Hayek, recipient of the Medal of Freedom in 1991 and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1974, taught at the University of Chicago, the University of London, and the University of Freiburg. Among his other works published by the University of Chicago Press is The Road to Serfdom, now available in a special fiftieth anniversary edition. “There is much interesting and valuable material in this meaty . . . book which must ultimately help the world make up its mind on a vital issue: to plan or not to plan?” —S. E. Harris, The New York Times “Those who disagree with him cannot afford to ignore him . . . This is especially true of a book like the present one.” —George Soule, Nation
Author :
Publisher :
Page : 1603 pages
File Size : 43,50 MB
Release : 2015
Category : Economics
ISBN :
Russell Cooper and Andrew John have written an economics text aimed directly at students from its very inception. You?re thinking, "Yeah, sure. I?ve heard that before." This textbook, Economics: Theory Through Applications, centers around student needs and expectations through two premises:? Students are motivated to study economics if they see that it relates to their own lives.? Students learn best from an inductive approach, in which they are first confronted with a problem, and then led through the process of solving that problem. Many books claim to present economics in a way that is digestible for students; Russell and Andrew have truly created one from scratch. This textbook will assist you in increasing students? economic literacy both by developing their aptitude for economic thinking and by presenting key insights about economics that every educated individual should know. How? Russell and Andrew have done three things in this text to accomplish that goal: Applications Ahead of Theory: They present all the theory that is standard in Principles books. But by beginning with applications, students get to learn why this theory is needed. Learning through Repetition: Important tools appear over and over again, allowing students to learn from repetition and to see how one framework can be useful in many different contexts. A Student?s Table of Contents vs. An Instructor?s Table of Contents: There is no further proof that Russell and Andrew have created a book aimed specifically at educating students about economics than their two tables of contents.
Author : Kenneth E. Boulding
Publisher : State University of New York Press
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 28,6 MB
Release : 1985-06-30
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780791497234
The Economics of Human Betterment is a comparative look at economic change and social progress. It is about betterment—a change or process—and about institutions and countries as they evolve. It is about human betterment—and therefore concerned with perceived welfare and the identification of basic human needs. And it is about economics, but about means as means, not means as ends. This book asks in what way productive activities (whether free market or planned, whether in developed or in developing countries) influence and reflect basic human values. The essays contained herein represent some of the best up-to-date accounts available on such topics as the welfare state in Holland or the relationship between growth and betterment in Singapore. Other essays take in the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and the planned economy of the Soviet Union. The contributors are all well-known experts in their own field. And their essays reveal a common conviction that economics is about people first, and about things only in so far as they contribute to human betterment.
