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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Public Policy, Human Instincts, And Economic Growth, Jonathan B. Wight
Public Policy, Human Instincts, And Economic Growth, Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
Alfred Marshall famously insisted that economics is more like biology than physics. Societies are organic ecologies that evolve and produce organized but unplanned complexity (Hayek 1979). Although no public policy reliably produces economic growth across all ecosystems, a key element unites diverse institutions and policies that do seem to work: they all are reasonably compatible with human instinct. Institutions that build on the basic instinct for self-betterment (as in markets) have a much easier time in achieving success than institutions that oppose it (as in communism). Instincts, like gravity, are a force of nature. Adam Smith theorized, for example, …
Moral Markets: The Critical Role Of Values In The Economy By Paul J. Zak (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight
Moral Markets: The Critical Role Of Values In The Economy By Paul J. Zak (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
This volume contains the fruits of a two-year seminar on ethics and economics funded by the John Templeton Foundation and administered through the Gruter Institute for Law and Behavioral Research. Participants came from the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, and included Nobel Laureate Vernon Smith and other figures such as Frans de Waal, Herbert Gintis, Robert Frank, and Robert Solomon (for whom the book is dedicated in memoriam). The book’s editor, Paul Zak, is a pioneer in the emerging field of neuroeconomics, which uses medical technology to discover the physiological manifestations of cooperative and altruistic behavior. A theme of …
Culture And Prosperity: The Truth About Markets—Why Some Nations Are Rich But Most Remain Poor (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight
Culture And Prosperity: The Truth About Markets—Why Some Nations Are Rich But Most Remain Poor (Book Review), Jonathan B. Wight
Economics Faculty Publications
John Kay’s latest book offers an absorbing romp through the history of economic thought in the 20th century. Kay attempts to explain the complex reality of a modern market system rather than resorting to simplistic theorizing about it. Gone are perfectly rational traders, perfectly competitive markets, incentive compatibilities, low transaction costs, informational symmetries, and no externalities. Kay highlights problems and problem solving as the ubiquitous and historical strata through which markets in the West evolved.