Behavioral economics, the analysis of economic decisions, has made enormous progress over the last decades and became accepted as a major field in economics. How is behavioral economics to be compared to the neoclassical model? As a revision of the neoclassical model enhancing the set of...

The firms and markets of today's complex socio-economic system developed in a spontaneous process termed evolution, in just the same way as the universe, the solar system, the Earth and all that lives upon it. Darwin's theory of evolution clearly demonstrated that evolution involved increasing...

I had the good fortune to grow up in a wonderful area of Jerusalem, surrounded by a diverse range of people: Rabbi Meizel, the communist Sala Marcel, my widowed Aunt Hannah, and the intellectual Yaacovson. As far as I'm concerned, the opinion of such people is just as authoritative for making...

It is fashionable to criticize economic theory for focusing too much on rationality and ignoring the imperfect and emotional way in which real economic decisions are reached. All of us facing the global economic crisis wonder just how rational economic men and women can be. Behavioral economics...

There has been a considerable revival of academic interest in questions about the fundamental nature of money and its role in modern capitalist economies during the past decade. This has been evident mainly in the social sciences outside the mainstream of academic economics, but even here there...

Summary In this article it is analysed which factors determine the medical and technological advances in the field of pharmaceuticals, medical products and medical procedures. We do not have a general theory on the determinants of technological advances. That’s why all arguments, which are in...

Academicians and practitioners are becoming increasingly interested inthe economics of Information Technology (IT). In part, this intereststems from the increased role that IT now plays in the strategicthinking of most large organizations, and from the significant dollarcosts expended by these...

The central motivation for assembling the contributions in this Handbook on the Knowledge Economy derives from the observation that many in government and business seem to have taken up the challenge of putting in place whatever is needed for a knowledge-based economy or a knowledge-based...

Hamilton (2001) makes a number of comments on our paper (Harding and Pagan, 2002b). The objectives of this rejoinder are, firstly, to note the areas in which we agree; secondly, to define with greater clarity the areas in which we disagree; and, thirdly, to point to other papers, including a longer...

There are many situations in which individuals have a choice of whether or not to observe the eventual outcome. In these instances, individuals often prefer to avoid observing the outcome. The standard von Neumann-Morgenstern (vNM) Expected Utility model cannot accommodate these cases, since it...