The pluralism debate in economics that has been going on for two decades has not yet been able to provide an exhaustive answer to the question of how to deal meaningfully with the phenomenon of a real plurality of paradigms, theories and methods in a fragmented scientific community....

There is growing awareness within the economics profession of the important role narratives play in the economy. Even though empirical approaches that try to quantify economic narratives are getting increasingly popular, there is no theory or even a universally accepted definition of economic...

This paper examines major forces that have decoupled economic and business prosperity from social prosperity and explores how recoupling can be promoted. Economists have specified well-known conditions under which free market enterprise with shareholder value maximization is efficient. These...

This paper examines major forces that have decoupled economic and business prosperity from social prosperity and explores how recoupling can be promoted. Economists have specified well-known conditions under which free market enterprise with shareholder value maximization is efficient. These...

There is growing awareness within the economics profession of the important role narratives play in the economy. Even though empirical approaches that try to quantify economic narratives are getting increasingly popular, there is no theory or even a universally accepted definition of economic...

The pluralism debate in economics that has been going on for two decades has not yet been able to provide an exhaustive answer to the question of how to deal meaningfully with the phenomenon of a real plurality of paradigms, theories and methods in a fragmented scientific community....

This paper outlines a framework for explaining change in agent identities, and uses the recent financial crisis to illustrate it by comparing two examples of identity change brought about by the crisis. The agent identity theory employed is the idea of a having capability for keeping a...

This chapter critically evaluates standard economics’ treatment of positive and normative, drawing on Putnam’s (2002) fact-value entanglement argument. It argues that economics is an inherently value-laden discipline but may still be an ‘objective’ one. The means of achieving this is to...

This chapter explores the evolution and contribution of social economics to modern political economic analysis. It reviews the origins and early history of social economics, discusses more fully recent postwar social economics, and then identifies new themes in social economics’ current...

This paper explores a new theoretical and empirical approach to the assessment of human well-being, relevant to current challenges of social fragmentation in the presence of globalization and technological advance. We present two indexes of well-being – solidarity (S) and agency (A) – to be...