A History Of Homo Economicus

A key issue in economic discourse today is the relation (or lack of it) between economic behaviour and morality. Few (presumably) would want to deny that human beings are in some sense moral or ethical creatures, but the devil is in the detail. Should we think of economic behaviour as an essentially amoral process – a process adequately characterised by a means-ends rationality – into which any number of subjective ethical concerns or orientations may be intruded to give a particular action its determinate moral content? Or is it rather the case that our moral being runs deeper than this, in the sense that all of our behaviour – ‘economic’ or otherwise – is enabled or capacitated by a competence that is fundamentally ethical in character? With new analyses of the work of Hobbes and Smith, Dixon and Wilson offer a fresh approach to the debate surrounding economics and morality with a novel discussion of the self in economic theory. This book calls for a change in the way that the relation between economic behaviour and morality is understood – from an understanding of morality as a kind of preference that informs certain types of other-regarding behaviour (the way that modern economics understands the relationship), to an idea of morality as a competence that enables or, rather, conditions the possibility of all forms of human behaviour, other-regarding or not. Offering a new insight on homo economicus, this book will be of great interest to all those interested in the history of economics and of economic thought.

Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of ‘Homo Economicus’ provides a transhistorical account of homo economicus (economic man), demonstrating this figure’s significance to economic theory and the Anglo-American novel over a 250-year period. Beginning with Adam Smith’s seminal texts – Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations – and Henry Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, this book combines the methodologies of new historicism and new economic criticism to investigate the evolution of the homo economicus model as it traverses through Ricardian economics and Jane Austen’s Sanditon; J. S. Mill and Charles Dickens’ engagement with mid-Victorian dualities; Keynesianism and Mrs Dalloway’s exploration of post-war consumer impulses; the a/moralistic discourses of Friedrich von Hayek, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; and finally the virtual crises of the twenty-first century financial market and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. Through its sustained comparative analysis of literary and economic discourses, this book transforms our understanding of the genre of the novel and offers critical new understandings of literary value, cultural capital and the moral foundations of political economy.

The West has long defined the pursuit of happiness in economic terms but now, in the wake of the 2007-8 financial crisis, it is time to think again about what constitutes our happiness. In this wide-ranging new book, the leading economist Daniel Cohen traces our current malaise back to the rise of homo economicus: for the last 200 years, the modern world has defined happiness in terms of material gain. Homo economicus has cast aside its rivals, homo ethicus and homo empathicus, and spread its neo-Darwinian logic far and wide. Yet, instead of bringing happiness, homo economicus traps human beings in a world devoid of any ideals. We are left feeling empty and dissatisfied. Today more and more people are beginning to recognize that competition and material gain are not the only things that matter in life. The central paradox of our era is that we look to the economy to give direction to our world at the very time when social needs are migrating toward sectors that are hard to place within the scope of market logic. Health, education, scientific research, and the world of the Internet form the heart of our post-industrial societies, but none of these belong to the traditional economic mould. While human creativity is higher than ever, homo economicus imposes himself like a sad prophet, a killjoy of the new age. Drawing on a rich array of examples, Cohen explores the new digital and genetic revolutions and examines the limitations of homo economicus in our rapidly transforming world. As human beings have an extraordinary ability to adapt, he argues that we need to rebalance the relation between competition and cooperation in favour of the latter. This thought-provoking analysis of our contemporary predicament will be of great value to anyone interested in the relationship between what happens in our economies and our personal happiness.

The economic model of behaviour is fundamental not only in economic theory, but also in modern approaches of other social sciences, above all in political science and law. This book provides a comprehensive treatise of the general model, its philosophical and methodological foundations and its applications in different fields. In addition to the basic model, extensions to its assumptions are examined to account for complex applications like low-cost situations with moral behaviour.

For neoclassical economists, Homo economicus, or economic human, represents the ideal employee: an energetic worker bee that is a rational yet competitive decision-maker. Alternatively, one could view the concept as a cold and selfish workaholic endlessly seeking the accumulation of money and advancement--a chilling representation of capitalism. Or perhaps, as Peter Fleming argues, Homo economicus does not actually exist at all. In The Death of Homo Economicus, Fleming presents this controversial claim with the same fierce logic and perception that launched his Guardian column into popularity. Fleming argues that as an invented model of a human being, Homo economicus is, in reality, a tool used by economists and capitalists to manage our social world through the state, business, and even family. As workers, we are barraged with constant reminders that we should always strive toward this ideal persona. It's implied--and sometimes directly stated--that if we don't then we are failures. Ironically, the people most often encouraged to emulate this model are those most predisposed to fail due to their socioeconomic circumstances: the poor, the unemployed, students, and prisoners. Fleming illuminates why a peculiar proactive negativity now marks everyday life in capitalist societies, and he explores how this warped, unattainable model for workers would cause chaos if enacted to the letter. Timely and revelatory, The Death of Homo Economicus offers a sharp, scathing critique of who we are supposed to be in the workplace and beyond.

Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.

For financial journalist Yannis Papadogiannis, the problem with the economic science that failed to predict the financial crisis that began unfolding in 2007 is clear. While modern economic theory relies on rational humans, The Rise and Fall of Homo Economicus busts the myth of the rational human wide open, demonstrating how, in the real world, Homo sapiens are far from fully rational creatures. Papadogiannis walks readers through the history of modern economics and reveals a consistent pattern of certainty and the illusion of control among economists leading into every crisis since the seventeenth century. He presents findings from disciplines such as neuroscience, psychology, and sociology that overturn the economist's idealized view of human nature, revealing that rationality is but one quality ruling behavior. In terms that anyone can understand, and drawing from a vast bibliography of well-known references, the book contrasts the imaginary universe of modern economics with the complex, dynamic, chaotic reality that more accurately describes our existence. A stinging indictment of economic science for its role in creating the crisis of 2007, The Rise and Fall of Homo Economicus is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding how our society functions or exploring ways to make economic science better serve us.

"The essays in this volume confront the inroads that economics has made into the legal academy.... Law and Economics uses principles of neoclassical economics to develop laws and social policies that maintain if not bolster current allocations of power."—from the Introduction The Law and Economics school has had a significant impact on the legal and governmental landscape in the United States. It posits a perfectly rational "economic man"—homo economicus—who is unconstrained by familial and communal ties and who can and should make decisions solely in light of considerations of economic value. Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus offers a major intervention in debates about how law has come under the influence of economic principles. Drawing on the latest thinking in the fields of feminist legal theory, critical legal studies, and feminist economics, the essays critique the notion that legal and policy decisions should be made solely through the lens of economics. While the contributors question the wholesale incorporation of the neoclassical economic model into legal analysis, they do not all discard economic analysis and theory. Situated at the intersection of feminism, law, and economics, Feminism Confronts Homo Economicus will appeal to scholars and students of these disciplines as well as policy analysts and social theorists interested in family, education, labor, and welfare.