Under what circumstances is it necessary or convenient for an agent to rely on habits and rules? This paper focuses on the types of decision situation giving rise to their use. Even optimisation requires the development of rules, and for this reason mainstream economics cannot legitimately...

Some recent articles debate the implications of the results of experimental economics. It is claimed by some that these results challenge the assumptions of expected utility theory. Others deny this. Both sides presume that the assumptions of rationality or expected utility-maximization are...

The 2008 economic crash led to remarkable shifts of opinion among world leaders. Does this crisis create favourable conditions for the reform and revitalisation of economics itself-from a subject dominated by mathematical techniques to a discipline more oriented to understanding real-world...

In his recent book on 'Property, Power and Politics', Jean-Philippe Robé makes a strong case for the need to understand the legal foundations of modern capitalism. He also insists that it is important to distinguish between firms and corporations. We agree. But Robé criticizes our definition...

In this short essay Hodgson denounces the superficiality in the teaching of economics and agrees with the student protests which have urged deep academic reforms. He also censures the absence of plurality and tolerance in teaching methods and argues that excessive mathematical formulation,...

For much of the twentieth century, mainstream economists have treated human agents in their models as if they were rational beings of unbounded computational capacity - the notorious 'Homo Economicus' of much economic theory. However, the patent inadequacies of this understanding of human nature...