Meaningful Economics Making the Science of Prosperity More Human

by Wilson, Bart J.

• ISBN13: 9780197758151
• ISBN10: 0197758150
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780197758175
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-12-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details

Summary

Economics has a problem--the discipline cannot distinguish the causes of human action from the consequences of human action. Economists deal with matters of fact, not with feelings and morals. They model representations of optimal agents, not flesh-and-blood human beings in ordinary life. By assuming that incentives and self-interest are sufficient to explain economic activity, economic science proceeds as if the human mind does not matter. But the origins of our actions--ideas--do indeed matter. They make us human.

In Meaningful Economics, Bart J. Wilson challenges economics to directly engage human beings as we really are, not as economists ideally assume. Wilson argues that economic science is as much about purposes and human values as it is about incentives. Moreover, he shows how the outcomes of our decisions (costs and benefits) and the origins of our decisions (motives and goals) can be understood in an integrated way.

Over the course of the book, Wilson develops a framework that connects the origins of human action to the outcomes of human action, explaining human conduct with causes and effects. He then shows how three basic principles of economics--trade, specialization, and property--require meaning, values, and purpose. With a fresh perspective and a novel theoretical framework that bridges economics and ethics, Meaningful Economics explains the roots of human conduct and its economic effects by grounding a science of economics in the moral sentiments that prompt human beings to act.

Author Biography

Bart J. Wilson is Professor of Economics and Law and Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University. He is the author of The Property Species: Mine, Yours, and the Human and co-author (with Vernon Smith) of Humanomics: Moral Sentiments and Wealth of Nations for the Twenty-First Century. He has also published widely in economics and general science journals, including the American Economic Review, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Scientific Reports, and Nature Human Behaviour.