As this comprehensive Companion demonstrates, social economics is a dynamic and growing field that emphasizes the key role that values play in the economy and in economic life. Social economics treats the economy and economics as being embedded in the larger web of social and ethical...

Over the last 25 years, the relative economic situation of women, African-Americans, and other groups facing economic discrimination has improved but, paradoxically, the relative economic situation of the population's lower half has worsened. These opposite trends are surprising since the very...

There has been no shortage of challenges to that most fundamental of all neo‐classical assumptions according to which people always act so as to maximise their utility. The most frequently heard objection has centred on the observation that acts of altruism are all around us. This...

Intro -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Freedom to Choose -- 3. Market Failure in the Shaping of Tastes -- 4. Fortifications, Extensions, Clarifications -- 5. Market Failure or Human Imperfection? -- 6. The Critic's Retreat -- 7. Sexual Choices: The First Order's Rise and the Second...