Is economics becoming a hard science? What power does it offer to explain, predict or influence economic events? These provocative questions are addressed in this major book by a group of acclaimed economists which discusses the scientific status of their discipline and its research agenda.

This book contributes to the current rapprochement between economics and sociology. It examines the fact that individuals use rules and interdependencies to forward their own interests, while living in social environments where everyone does the same. The authors argue that to construct durable...

Models and Reality in Economics is an important contribution to the philosophy of economics and the conduct of inquiry in economics. It examines what economists do and what economics is about.

This insightful book offers an original approach to the moral philosophy and economics of Adam Smith. The author proposes new ways of linking Smith’s moral theories to his economics, stressing that for Smith, a moral science of economics is not a contradiction in terms, and that moral...

The economic approach to law relies on the use of economic models, mostly mathematical, for understanding the nature and function of law. The articles in this collection reflect state-of-the-art modeling techniques and explore how to use these to both formulate important questions and resolve...

This highly original new book examines the scientific status of economics from the perspective of practising economists. It studies how they evaluate their theories, the relationship between those theories and the phenomena they are intended to represent, and the philosophy, methodology and...

Comprising a series of unique and informative interviews, this original book focuses on the evolution and current state of the economic literature on the Great Depression. Renowned economists assess the status of the remaining debates, evaluate what economists do and do not know about the...

This book applies a critical focus on the extent to which methodological practices in mainstream economic theory impede our understanding of substantive economic phenomena as the products of human action. Economists, in general, work with a concept and representation of the human agent that is...

During the last two decades researchers in the field of experimental law and economics have made significant contributions to our knowledge of human behaviour and its interaction with legal and regulatory environments. This collection of previously published papers examines the use of laboratory...