We have been asked to examine the individualism-holism dichotomy within economics. We pursue this examination by probing the contours of several dichotomies that recur throughout the resulting debates over method. The primary dichotomy concerns whether society is properly an analytical object...

Public choice theory was initiated by economists and political scientists in the late-1950s and early 1960s and is generally described as the application of economic concepts and formulations to political phenomena. This essay explains that economizing action and public choice are universal...

Game theory holds out the promise of transforming the core of economic theory from ascience of rational choice into a science of human interaction. While traditional gametheory does open into social interaction, it mostly neglects another central feature ofeconomic intuition: spontaneous...

Nicholas Vriend (2002) asked whether F.A. Hayek was an “ace,” and answered affirmatively. By “ace,” Vriend meant someone who worked with agent-based modeling. To be sure, Hayek could not have worked with agent-based models because that platform did not exist when Hayek was developing his...

In recent years the term behavioral economics has arisen in consequence of the growing effort of a significant set of economists to import psychological methods and findings into economics. This body of work issues strong challenges to the use economists have made of rationality in economics....

This paper is concerned with the way economists conceptualize the relationship between politics and property rights. It is customary for economists to treat polity and economy as comprising separate domains of human action. In contrast, we treat society as a single domain of action comprised of...

This essay is a keynote address prepared for a conference on "Entangled Political Economy" sponsored by the Wirth Institute. In keeping with the conventions of such an address, I look both backward and forward while placing more emphasis on looking forward. In looking backward, I compare and...