The outburst of the 2008 global economic crisis sparked myriad criticism on mainstream neoclassical economic theory, which is blamed for not even have considered the possibility of the kind of collapse that the subprime mortgage meltdown unleashed. In this paper, it is argued that what happened...

This paper is a scientific revolution in motion. Pragmatic empirical work is combined with macroeconomic theory to provide a scientific analysis of the influence of Keynesian theories on the performance the US economy since the Second World War. Despite recent decades of apparent revival of...

Regardless of the fact that economics distinguishes itself from other social sciences by a high level of formal deductive modelling, it is a social science due to the essence of the economic process where a human is subject and object at the same time. In the recent years this issue has been...

Economic theory emerges through interaction among interested participants, with the content of those theories being a product of spontaneous ordering and not scientific planning. At any moment, it is reasonable to expect various theoretical formulations to be in play, some typically receiving...

This is a substantially revised, refocused, and updated version of an earlier draft paper, exploring the significant role Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) plays in facilitating or impeding legislative and regulatory policy decisions. The paper centers around three case studies of CBAs EPA prepared...

The political economy of medieval Europe was shaped by alliances between lords and vassals, forged through peaceful and violent means. We model coalition formation through bargaining or by conquest, and where members can rebel against their coalition. We derive conditions under which a realm...

We study learning in a large class of complete information normal form games. Players continually face new strategic situations and must form beliefs by extrapolation from similar past situations. We characterize the long-run outcomes of learning in terms of iterated dominance in a related...

The structures of social interaction affect individual behavior and economic performance in important ways. This leads us to ask: does the architecture of social interaction exhibit particular patterns and are these patterns stable over time? We examine interaction among economists by looking at...

Entitlement programs have become an increasing component of total government spending in the US over the last six decades. To some observers, this growth of the welfare state is excessive and unwarranted. To others, it is a welcome counter-acting force to the rapid increase in income inequality....