Download or read book A History of Homo Economicus written by William Dixon and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-03-01 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A key issue in economic discourse today is the relation (or lack of it) between economic behaviour and morality. Few (presumably) would want to deny that human beings are in some sense moral or ethical creatures, but the devil is in the detail. Should we think of economic behaviour as an essentially amoral process – a process adequately characterised by a means-ends rationality – into which any number of subjective ethical concerns or orientations may be intruded to give a particular action its determinate moral content? Or is it rather the case that our moral being runs deeper than this, in the sense that all of our behaviour – ‘economic’ or otherwise – is enabled or capacitated by a competence that is fundamentally ethical in character? With new analyses of the work of Hobbes and Smith, Dixon and Wilson offer a fresh approach to the debate surrounding economics and morality with a novel discussion of the self in economic theory. This book calls for a change in the way that the relation between economic behaviour and morality is understood – from an understanding of morality as a kind of preference that informs certain types of other-regarding behaviour (the way that modern economics understands the relationship), to an idea of morality as a competence that enables or, rather, conditions the possibility of all forms of human behaviour, other-regarding or not. Offering a new insight on homo economicus, this book will be of great interest to all those interested in the history of economics and of economic thought.
Download or read book Homo Economicus written by Daniel Cohen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-06-13 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The West has long defined the pursuit of happiness in economic terms but now, in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis, it is time to think again about what constitutes our happiness. In this wide-ranging new book, the leading economist Daniel Cohen traces our current malaise back to the rise of homo economicus: for the last 200 years, the modern world has defined happiness in terms of material gain. Homo economicus has cast aside its rivals, homo ethicus and homo empathicus, and spread its neo-Darwinian logic far and wide. Yet, instead of bringing happiness, homo economicus traps human beings in a world devoid of any ideals. We are left feeling empty and dissatisfied. Today more and more people are beginning to recognize that competition and material gain are not the only things that matter in life. The central paradox of our era is that we look to the economy to give direction to our world at the very time when social needs are migrating toward sectors that are hard to place within the scope of market logic. Health, education, scientific research, and the world of the Internet form the heart of our post-industrial societies, but none of these belong to the traditional economic mould. While human creativity is higher than ever, homo economicus imposes himself like a sad prophet, a killjoy of the new age. Drawing on a rich array of examples, Cohen explores the new digital and genetic revolutions and examines the limitations of homo economicus in our rapidly transforming world. As human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt, he argues that we need to rebalance the relation between competition and cooperation in favour of the latter. This thought-provoking analysis of our contemporary predicament will be of great value to anyone interested in the relationship between what happens in our economies and our personal happiness.
Download or read book Political Economy and the Novel written by Sarah Comyn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-10-04 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of ‘Homo Economicus’ provides a transhistorical account of homo economicus (economic man), demonstrating this figure’s significance to economic theory and the Anglo-American novel over a 250-year period. Beginning with Adam Smith’s seminal texts – Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations – and Henry Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, this book combines the methodologies of new historicism and new economic criticism to investigate the evolution of the homo economicus model as it traverses through Ricardian economics and Jane Austen’s Sanditon; J. S. Mill and Charles Dickens’ engagement with mid-Victorian dualities; Keynesianism and Mrs Dalloway’s exploration of post-war consumer impulses; the a/moralistic discourses of Friedrich von Hayek, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; and finally the virtual crises of the twenty-first century financial market and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. Through its sustained comparative analysis of literary and economic discourses, this book transforms our understanding of the genre of the novel and offers critical new understandings of literary value, cultural capital and the moral foundations of political economy.
Download or read book The Death of Homo Economicus written by Peter Fleming and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sharp analysis of the nature of work under late capitalism, revealing the dark side of aspiration and utility.
Download or read book Global Observations of the Influence of Culture on Consumer Buying Behavior written by Sarma, Sarmistha and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2017-07-13 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Positive consumerism is the backbone to a strong economy. Examining the relationship between culture and marketing can provide companies with the data they need to expand their reach and increase their profits. Global Observations of the Influence of Culture on Consumer Buying Behavior is an in-depth, scholarly resource that discusses how marketing practices can be influenced by cultural preferences. Featuring an array of relevant topics including societal environments, cultural stereotyping, brand loyalty, and marketing semiotics, this publication is ideal for CEOs, business managers, professionals, and researchers that are interested in studying alternative factors that impact the marketing field.
Download or read book Homo Oeconomicus written by Gebhard Kirchgässner and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-06-13 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The economic model of behaviour is fundamental not only in economic theory, but also in modern approaches of other social sciences, above all in political science and law. This book provides a comprehensive treatise of the general model, its philosophical and methodological foundations and its applications in different fields. In addition to the basic model, extensions to its assumptions are examined to account for complex applications like low-cost situations with moral behaviour.
Download or read book The Moral Economy written by Samuel Bowles and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2016-05-28 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.
Download or read book Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus written by Martha Fineman and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-06 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The essays in this volume confront the inroads that economics has made into the legal academy.... Law and Economics uses principles of neoclassical economics to develop laws and social policies that maintain if not bolster current allocations of power."—from the Introduction The Law and Economics school has had a significant impact on the legal and governmental landscape in the United States. It posits a perfectly rational "economic man"—homo economicus—who is unconstrained by familial and communal ties and who can and should make decisions solely in light of considerations of economic value. Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus offers a major intervention in debates about how law has come under the influence of economic principles. Drawing on the latest thinking in the fields of feminist legal theory, critical legal studies, and feminist economics, the essays critique the notion that legal and policy decisions should be made solely through the lens of economics. While the contributors question the wholesale incorporation of the neoclassical economic model into legal analysis, they do not all discard economic analysis and theory. Situated at the intersection of feminism, law, and economics, Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus will appeal to scholars and students of these disciplines as well as policy analysts and social theorists interested in family, education, labor, and welfare.
Download or read book From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities written by Geoffrey M. Hodgson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are humans at their core seekers of their own pleasure or cooperative members of society? Paradoxically, they are both. Pleasure-seeking can take place only within the context of what works within a defined community, and central to any community are the evolved codes and principles guiding appropriate behavior, or morality. The complex interaction of morality and self-interest is at the heart of Geoffrey M. Hodgson’s approach to evolutionary economics, which is designed to bring about a better understanding of human behavior. In From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities, Hodgson casts a critical eye on neoclassical individualism, its foundations and flaws, and turns to recent insights from research on the evolutionary bases of human behavior. He focuses his attention on the evolution of morality, its meaning, why it came about, and how it influences human attitudes and behavior. This more nuanced understanding sets the stage for a fascinating investigation of its implications on a range of pressing issues drawn from diverse environments, including the business world and crucial policy realms like health care and ecology. This book provides a valuable complement to Hodgson’s earlier work with Thorbjørn Knudsen on evolutionary economics in Darwin’s Conjecture, extending the evolutionary outlook to include moral and policy-related issues.
Download or read book The Economic Reason written by Shane Sanders and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-12-14 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of conversational essays, this textbook discusses the manner in which economic thought addresses a broad array of everyday issues beyond classical textbook treatments. In the spirit of popular economics books, the author uncovers economic issues and solutions from individuals, businesses, society, and the country as a whole in a decidedly non-technical and relatable manner. Should the federal government mandate use of child safety seats on commercial airlines? Can genetic information substitute for a college degree? The contents of this book touch on many of these contemporary topics in an accessible way. Addressing undergraduate and graduate students, as well as scholars in different fields of economics, this book is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of economic thought.
Download or read book Karl Polanyi written by Gareth Dale and published by Polity. This book was released on 2010-06-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.
Download or read book The Ecology of Law written by Fritjof Capra and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2015-10-05 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner, IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award in Politics/Current Events: A systems theorist and a legal scholar present a new paradigm for protecting our planet. This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: The world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Fritjof Capra, physicist, systems theorist, and bestselling author of The Tao of Physics, and distinguished legal scholar Ugo Mattei show that this obsolete worldview has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good. Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on Earth that better addresses many of the economic and social crises we face today. This is a visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet. “Thoughtful . . . The authors propose a philosophy and jurisprudence that is deeply radical—upending centuries of Western tradition and culture—but possibly crucial to solving looming environmental problems.” —Publishers Weekly
Download or read book Humanity and Nature in Economic Thought written by Gábor Bíró and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Humanity and Nature in Economic Thought: Searching for the Organic Origins of the Economy argues that organic elements seen as incompatible with rational homo economicus have been left out of, or downplayed in, mainstream histories of economic thought. The chapters show that organic aspects (that is, aspects related to sensitive, cognitive or social human qualities) were present in the economic ideas of a wide range of important thinkers including Hume, Smith, Malthus, Mill, Marshall, Keynes, Hayek and the Polanyi brothers. Moreover, the contributors to this thought-provoking volume reveal in turn that these aspects were crucial to how these key figures thought about the economy. This stimulating collection of essays will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of the history of economic thought, economic philosophy, heterodox economics, moral philosophy and intellectual history.
Download or read book The Idea of Europe written by Anthony Pagden and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2002-04-04 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Discusses how a distinctive 'European' identity has grown over the centuries, especially with the EU.
Download or read book Who Cooked Adam Smith s Dinner written by Katrine Marcal and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2016-06-07 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do you get your dinner? That is the basic question of economics. When economist and philosopher Adam Smith proclaimed that all our actions were motivated by self-interest, he used the example of the baker and the butcher as he laid the foundations for 'economic man,' arguing that the baker and butcher didn't give bread and meat out of the goodness of their hearts. It's an ironic point of view coming from a bachelor who lived with his mother for most of his life—a woman who cooked his dinner every night.The economic man has dominated our understanding of modern-day capitalism, with a focus on self-interest and the exclusion of all other motivations. Such a view point disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking. It insists that if women are paid less, then that's because their labor is worth less.A kind of femininst Freakonomics, Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner? charts the myth of economic man—from its origins at Adam Smith's dinner table, its adaptation by the Chicago School, and its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis—in a witty and courageous dismantling of one of the biggest myths of our time.
Download or read book Late Neoclassical Economics written by Yahya M. Madra and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-06-10 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Several contemporary economic theories revolve around different concepts: market failures, institutions, transaction costs, information asymmetries, motivational diversity, cognitive limitations, strategic behaviors and evolutionary stability. In recent years, many economists have argued that the increase in circulation and mobilization of these new and heterogeneous concepts and their associated methodologies (e.g., experiments, evolutionary modelling, simulations) signify the death of neoclassical economics. Late Neoclassical Economics: The Restoration of Theoretical Humanism in Contemporary Economic Theory draws on the work of Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault and the Amherst School, to construct the concept of a self-transparent and self-conscious human subject (Homo economicus) as the theoretical humanist core of the neoclassical tradition. Instead of identifying the emergent heterogeneity as a break from neoclassicism, this book offers a careful genealogy of many of the new concepts and approaches - including evolutionary game theory, experimental economics and behavioural economics - and reads their elaboration as part of the restoration of the theoretical humanist core of the tradition. ‘Late neoclassical economics’ is therefore characterized as a collection of diverse approaches which have emerged in response to the drift towards structuralism. This book is suitable for those who study political economy, history of economic thought and philosophy of economics. The arguments put forward in this text will also resonate with anyone who is interested in the fate of the neoclassical tradition and the future of economic theory.
Download or read book Examining the Relationship Between Economics and Philosophy written by Akansel, Ilkben and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2019-10-25 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In today’s data-driven world, certain infrastructures of society have begun to lose their anthropological traits. Economics, specifically, has started placing importance on quantity over quality, excluding its philosophical perspective. Scientists and associates of economics need to be reacquainted with the psychological aspect of commerce and its significance to humanity. Examining the Relationship Between Economics and Philosophy is an essential reference source that discusses the psychological view of economics as well as its philosophical background. Featuring research on topics such as cognitive science, neoliberalism, and neuroeconomics, this book is ideally designed for scientists, economists, managers, executives, academicians, researchers, and students seeking coverage on the philosophy of the financial system and its impact on competitive markets.
