This paper aims to study the ‘economics made fun' literature with regard to its main purpose: popularizing economics. We shed an historical light on such literature by showing that its main strategy for introducing economics to non-specialists had already been tried in the 1970s in what were...

This article contextualizes the writing, reception, and impact of Gary Becker's first book, The Economics of Discrimination, in order to deepen our understanding of the relationships between economics and the other social sciences. First, we study the social scientific work on race relations...

This essay analyzes what Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner have written for various media (either in print or online) that are not strictly aimed at academic audiences. We provide an historical account of how they became interested in such activities, from their first attempts, made...

This article investigates the expansion of the scope of economics in the 1960s. We show that the public policy problems raised by the issue of poverty reinforced the expansion, as economists became progressively involved in the social issues of the day. Until the early 1960s, poverty was a...

This paper tracks economists' rising, yet elusive and unstable interest in collective decision mechanism after World War II. We replace their examination of voting procedures and social welfare functions in the 1940s and 1950s in the context of their growing involvement with policy-making....