Download or read book Human Nature in Modern Economics written by Anna Horodecka and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-06-15 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human Nature in Modern Economics offers a precise definition of the concept of human nature in economics, something that is so far lacking in the theoretical and methodological literature. This book develops tools for the analysis of human nature through the construction of the author’s meta-model – based on anthropological and psychological foundations – allowing for comparisons of anthropological assumptions made in economic theories. The model demonstrates that the normative functions of human nature may affect the economic reality. The chapters argue that the concept of human nature determines our thinking about the economy and economics, including fundamental methodologies, methods and theories. Thus, the differences between various economic schools may result from the different assumptions of these schools about human nature. Those evolving views of human nature proceed to explain the development of both orthodox (mainstream) and heterodox economics. The book marks a significant addition to the literature on the history of economic thought, heterodox economics, economic theory and economic methodology. For students, it is a supplement to standard textbooks as it explains the current state of economics, especially in its heterodox branches. It will allow scholars to discover the importance of what they assume about human nature and how it may influence their research process.

Download or read book The Good the Bad and the Economy written by Louis G. Putterman and published by Hillcrest Publishing Group. This book was released on 2012 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the past century's extraordinary advances in technology and scientific knowledge, today's world is still racked by economic insecurity, vast gulfs between rich and poor, violent conflicts, and daunting environmental problems. What's stopping us from building a world in which there's less inequality and more nurturing of the individual's potential to lead a satisfying life? Does the central role of self-interest in human nature necessitate economic arrangements that condemn us to living on a treadmill of consumerism and insecurity? Will the gap between rich and poor countries ever be bridged? These are the key questions that Brown University economist Louis Putterman's "The Good, the Bad, and the Economy" addresses in surprising new ways.

Download or read book Basic Instincts written by Pete Lunn and published by Marshall Cavendish Books Limited. This book was released on 2009-11-19 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human instincts are surprisingly sophisticated and subtle, having adapted over generations of trading with each other. Understanding how these instincts work can not only change the way you think about your own affairs, it can alter how you think about a whole range of economic and business issues (from what constitutes a fair salary to the impact of globalisation).A new breed of economists - known as behavioural economists - has started to observe economic life more closely. This book reveals the fascinating results of their studies . Human instincts have long been ignored by traditional economics, but they are crucial factors in major economic decisions, and hence important for our futures. This engaging book is about those human instincts and how the study of them has begun to change fundamentally the science of economics and our own behaviour in today's world

Download or read book Human Economics written by Sara Casagrande and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term “human economics” is sometimes used within economic theory with the hope of repositioning economic discipline as a human and social science, but with scarce success. Indeed, although great economists have always carefully considered human nature, it has been largely neglected in modern economics. This book explores the potentials of a human economics, arguing that the complexity and peculiarities of human nature should be central to the study of economics. Complex economic phenomena are subject to laws and limits that reveal their internal order in spite of the apparent randomness and unpredictability. The book embraces the contributions of thinkers and economists who have tried to fully consider human nature and society within their biological environment. From these solid foundations, the book introduces a different Weltanschauung, offers an analysis of socio-economic paradigms, and develops an alternative theoretical framework. On the basis of a transdisciplinary methodology, the book investigates human nature, interactions, and systems up to the macroeconomic cyclical development of the capitalist system. Future perspectives and issues facing modern economies are also discussed from environmental sustainability to globalization and socio-political challenges. This book marks an original contribution to the literature on retooling economic discipline and presents useful food for thought for scholarly readers while remaining accessible to graduates who are studying mainstream economics.

Download or read book Free Market Madness written by Peter A. Ubel and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2009-01-20 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humans just aren't entirely rational creatures. We decide to roll over and hit the snooze button instead of going to the gym. We take out home loans we can't possibly afford. And did you know that people named Paul are more likely to move to St. Paul than other cities? All too often, our subconscious causes us to act against our own self-interest. But our free-market economy is based on the assumption that we always do act in our own self-interest. In this provocative book, physician Peter Ubel uses his understanding of psychology and behavior to show that in some cases government must regulate markets for our own health and well-being. And by understanding and controlling the factors that go into our decisions, big and small, we can all begin to stop the damage we do to our bodies, our finances, and our economy as a whole. Ubel's vivid stories bring his message home for anyone interested in improving the way our society works.

Download or read book The Battle for Human Nature Science Morality and Modern Life written by Barry Schwartz and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1987-08-17 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Provocative and richly textured. . . .Schwartz’s analyses of the inadequacies of contemporary scientific views of human nature are compelling, but the consequences are even more worthy of note.” —Los Angeles Times Out of the investigations and speculations of contemporary science, a challenging view of human behavior and society has emerged and gained strength. It is a view that equates “human nature” utterly and unalterably with the pursuit of self-interest. Influenced by this view, people increasingly appeal to natural imperatives, instead of moral ones, to explain and justify their actions and those of others.

Download or read book Misbehaving The Making of Behavioral Economics written by Richard H. Thaler and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 502 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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

Download or read book Doughnut Economics written by Kate Raworth and published by Chelsea Green Publishing. This book was released on 2018-03-08 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics is the mother tongue of public policy. It dominates our decision-making for the future, guides multi-billion-dollar investments, and shapes our responses to climate change, inequality, and other environmental and social challenges that define our times. Pity then, or more like disaster, that its fundamental ideas are centuries out of date yet are still taught in college courses worldwide and still used to address critical issues in government and business alike. That’s why it is time, says renegade economist Kate Raworth, to revise our economic thinking for the 21st century. In Doughnut Economics, she sets out seven key ways to fundamentally reframe our understanding of what economics is and does. Along the way, she points out how we can break our addiction to growth; redesign money, finance, and business to be in service to people; and create economies that are regenerative and distributive by design. Named after the now-iconic “doughnut” image that Raworth first drew to depict a sweet spot of human prosperity (an image that appealed to the Occupy Movement, the United Nations, eco-activists, and business leaders alike), Doughnut Economics offers a radically new compass for guiding global development, government policy, and corporate strategy, and sets new standards for what economic success looks like. Raworth handpicks the best emergent ideas—from ecological, behavioral, feminist, and institutional economics to complexity thinking and Earth-systems science—to address this question: How can we turn economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive, into economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow? Simple, playful, and eloquent, Doughnut Economics offers game-changing analysis and inspiration for a new generation of economic thinkers.

Download or read book Human Nature and the Discipline of Economics written by Patricia Donohue-White and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2002 with total page 136 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundations of Economic Personalism is a series of three book-length monographs, each closely examining a significant dimension of the Center for Economic Personalism's unique synthesis of Christian personalism and free-economic market theory. In the aftermath of the momentous geo-political and economic changes of the late 1980s, a small group of Christian social ethicists began to converse with free-market economists over the morality of market activity. This interdisciplinary exchange eventually led to the founding of a new academic subdiscipline under the rubric of economic personalism. These scholars attempt to integrate economic theory, history, and methodology with Christian personalism's stress upon human dignity, humane social structures, and social justice. This second volume in the series surveys the anthropological foundations to the disciplines of economics and moral theology. The first part of the book presents an overview of the German, French, and Polish branches of personalist thought. Particular attention is given to theological anthropology, especially as it is developed by such thinkers as Emmanuel Mounier, Max Scheler, Gabriel Marcel, Karol Wojtyla, and Emil Brunner. Part two surveys models of human nature that have been espoused by various schools of free-market thought-including mainstream neoclassical economics. In conclusion, the authors demonstrate how an expanded understanding of human nature can augment the ability of economic science to model and predict human behavior.

Download or read book Nature Human Nature and Human Difference written by Justin E. H. Smith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have always been xenophobic, but an explicit philosophical and scientific view of human racial difference only began to emerge during the modern period. Why and how did this happen? Surveying a range of philosophical and natural-scientific texts, dating from the Spanish Renaissance to the German Enlightenment, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference charts the evolution of the modern concept of race and shows that natural philosophy, particularly efforts to taxonomize and to order nature, played a crucial role. Smith demonstrates how the denial of moral equality between Europeans and non-Europeans resulted from converging philosophical and scientific developments, including a declining belief in human nature's universality and the rise of biological classification. The racial typing of human beings grew from the need to understand humanity within an all-encompassing system of nature, alongside plants, minerals, primates, and other animals. While racial difference as seen through science did not arise in order to justify the enslavement of people, it became a rationalization and buttress for the practices of trans-Atlantic slavery. From the work of François Bernier to G. W. Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, and others, Smith delves into philosophy's part in the legacy and damages of modern racism. With a broad narrative stretching over two centuries, Nature, Human Nature, and Human Difference takes a critical historical look at how the racial categories that we divide ourselves into came into being.

Download or read book The Adam Smith Problem written by Doğan Göçmen and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the first scholarly work to deal solely with the Adam Smith problem, namely the apparent contradiction between Adam Smith's most famous works, "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" and "The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations". Since the 1840s scholars have puzzled over and attempted to explain the fact that these works offer two fundamentally different and contradictory concepts of human nature. In this radical new approach Do an Gocmen argues that there are, indeed, two different concepts of human nature; in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments", Smith advocates a broad synchronization of human intention and behaviour under a beneficent providence in a system of mutual sympathy, whereas "Wealth of Nations" is a critical account of the human situation of the individual and is an egoistic description of human beings in commercial society. Gocmen argues that Smith does indeed put forward two different and varied ideas, arguing that the ethical position articulated in "The Theory of Moral Sentiments" can be, and was intended by Smith to be, applied as a basis for criticising the commercial society analysed in the "Wealth of Nations". Gocmen argues that this ethical position points to the character of its ideal future replacement, that of Adam Smith's Utopia. Gocmen therefore dismisses as short-sighted and oversimple the common assumption that Adam Smith's Utopia consists merely of 'the invisible hand', the idea that markets would regulate everything if left to their own dynamics. This book challenges the traditional approach to Adam Smith and is the first contribution to the solution of a long-standing debate, making it essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the moral philosophy, political economy and utopian thought of Adam Smith."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Download or read book The Natural Origins of Economics written by Margaret Schabas and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-05-15 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: References to the economy are ubiquitous in modern life, and virtually every facet of human activity has capitulated to market mechanisms. In the early modern period, however, there was no common perception of the economy, and discourses on money, trade, and commerce treated economic phenomena as properties of physical nature. Only in the early nineteenth century did economists begin to posit and identify the economy as a distinct object, divorcing it from natural processes and attaching it exclusively to human laws and agency. In The Natural Origins of Economics, Margaret Schabas traces the emergence and transformation of economics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries from a natural to a social science. Focusing on the works of several prominent economists—David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, David Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill—Schabas examines their conceptual debt to natural science and thus locates the evolution of economic ideas within the history of science. An ambitious study, The Natural Origins of Economics will be of interest to economists, historians, and philosophers alike.

Download or read book The Wealth of Nations written by Adam Smith and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-11-14 with total page 806 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Wealth of Nations is the magnum opus of the Scottish economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith. The book offers one of the world's first collected descriptions of what builds nations' wealth, and is today a fundamental work in classical economics. By reflecting upon the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the book touches upon such broad topics as the division of labor, productivity, and free markets. The Wealth of Nations was the product of seventeen years of notes and earlier works, as well as an observation of conversation among economists of the time concerning economic and societal conditions during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The result was a treatise which sought to offer a practical application for reformed economic theory to replace the mercantilist and physiocratic economic theories that were becoming less relevant in the time of industrial progress and innovation.

Download or read book The Theory of Moral Sentiments written by Adam Smith (économiste) and published by . This book was released on 1812 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Words Objects and Events in Economics written by Peter Róna and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-09-03 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.

Download or read book The Wealth of Nations The Theory of Moral Sentiments written by Adam Smith and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2023-12-24 with total page 1571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The invisible hand of the market is a metaphor conceived by Adam Smith to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace. The exact phrase is used just three times in Smith's writings, but has come to capture his important claim that individuals' efforts to maximize their own gains in a free market benefits society, even if the ambitious have no benevolent intentions. Smith came up with the two meanings of the phrase from Richard Cantillon who developed both economic applications in his model of the isolated estate. He first introduced the concept in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, written in 1759. In this work, however, the idea of the market is not discussed, and the word "capitalism" is never used. By the time he wrote The Wealth of Nations in 1776, Smith had studied the economic models of the French Physiocrats for many years, and in this work the invisible hand is more directly linked to the concept of the market: specifically that it is competition between buyers and sellers that channels the profit motive of individuals on both sides of the transaction such that improved products are produced and at lower costs. Adam Smith (1723–1790) was a Scottish economist, philosopher and author as well as a moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economy and a key figure during the Scottish Enlightenment era. Smith is best known for two classic works: The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776). The latter, usually abbreviated as The Wealth of Nations, is considered his magnum opus and the first modern work of economics.

Download or read book Ontology and Closeness in Human Nature Relationships written by Neil H. Kessler and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-10 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Ontology and Closeness in Human-Nature Relationships, Neil H. Kessler identifies the preconceptions which can keep the modern human mind in the dark about what is happening relationally between humans and the more-than-human world. He has written an accessible work of environmental philosophy, with a focus on the ontology of human-nature relationships. In it, he contends that large-scale environmental problems are intimate and relational in origin. He also challenges the deeply embedded, modernist assumptions about the relational limitations of more-than-human beings, ones which place erroneous limitations on the possibilities for human/more-than-human closeness. Diverging from the posthumanist literature and its frequent reliance on new materialist ontology, the arguments in the book attempt to sweep away what ecofeminists call “human/nature dualisms. In doing so, conceptual avenues open up that have the power to radically alter how we engage in our daily interactions with the more-than-human world all around us. Given the diversity of fields and disciplines focused on the human-nature relationship, the topics of this book vary quite broadly, but always converge at the nexus of what is possible between humans and more-than-human beings. The discussion interweaves the influence of human/nature dualisms with the limitations of Deleuzian becoming and posthumanism’s new materialism and agential realism. It leverages interhuman interdependence theory, Charles Peirce’s synechism of feeling and various treatments of Theory of Mind while exploring the influence of human/nature dualisms on sustainability, place attachment, common worlds pedagogy, emergence, and critical animal studies. It also explores the implications of plant electrical activity, plant intelligence, and plant “neurobiology” for possibilities of relational capacities in plants while even grappling with theories of animism to challenge the animate/inanimate divide. The result is an engaging, novel treatment of human-nature relational ontology that will encourage the reader to look at the world in a whole new way.