For non-economists, it is often difficult to understand why economists place so much emphasis on the self-interest motive. It is obvious that people act out of a variety of motives - gratitude, anger, social obligation and many, many other motives. There are several reasons why economists still...

Four types of economicsʺ relevant for institutional analysis are distinguished: Standard Neoclassical Economics; Socio-Economics or Social Economics; New Institutional Economics; and Psychological Economics (often misleadingly called Behavioural Economics). The paper argues that an extension of...

Two basic tenets of the Walrasian model, behavior based on self-interested exogenous preferences and complete and costless contracting have recently come under critical scrutiny. First, social norms and psychological dispositions extending beyond the selfish motives of Homo economicus may have...

Although it is common in economics to compare institutions on the basis of single dimensional measures of concepts such as efficiency, fairness or freedom, Allan Schmid's Conflict and Cooperation: Institutional and Behavioral Economics rejects that approach with a sharply contrasting vision of...