(WP 2011-08) Identity

This chapter introduces the economics and identity literature, and discusses the relationship between social identity and personal identity. It distinguishes categorical and relational types of social identities, and argues that the former are more readily associated with instrumentally rational behavior, while the latter, which involve close contact with others in roles and social positions, are more readily associated with behavior in which individuals unilaterally reciprocate the actions of others – what Bruni terms unilateral altruism, which involves a non-instrumental or deontological type of motivation. The chapter also distinguishes two views of personal identity as relational in nature, Bachrach\u27s game-theoretic approach and one based on collective intentionality theory, and concludes by arguing that the Homo economicus view of personal identity is circular

(WP 2012-01) Samuels on Methodological Pluralism in Economics

Warren Samuels was an influential proponent of methodological pluralism in economics. This short paper discusses his understanding of methodological pluralism, and argues that it is based on three distinct components: (1) his critique of the idea that theories have epistemic foundations and his \u27matrix approach to meaningfulness,\u27 (2) his belief that the absence of meta-principles for science combined with our human psychology create an existential dilemma for theorists and policy-makers, and (3) his understanding of relativism, social constructivism, and \u27limited but affirmative\u27 defense of nihilism against the charge of skepticism. The paper closes with a brief discussion of what Samuels\u27 methodological pluralism might tell us about historiography and the history of economics

(WP 2011-10) Obituary: Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011)

This paper examines the research and career of the late Warren J. Samuels (1933-2011), an influential institutionalist economist in the Wisconsin John Commons tradition and well-known historian and methodologist of economics. It discusses four main positions Samuels developed and held regarding the history of economic thought as intellectual history, the theory of economic policy, methodological pluralism, and the invisible hand doctrine. Among the views considered are: his matrix approach to meaningfulness, his characterization of intellectual systems, his emphasis on the centrality of the social order, his theory of economic policy as a neglected subject, his discourse analysis of language, his emphasis on the hermeneutic circle and critique of foundationalism, and argument that the invisible hand lacks ontological and epistemological credentials and functions as a means of social control and psychic balm. Much of the discussion is cast in terms of Samuels’ own reflections on what he believed is involved in being an historian of economics

(WP 2011-02) The Change in Sraffa\u27s Philosophical Thinking

The availability of Piero Sraffa’s unpublished manuscripts and correspondence at Trinity College Library, Cambridge, has made it possible to begin to set out a more complete account of Sraffa’s philosophical thinking than previously could be done with only his published materials and the few comments and suggestions made by others about his ideas, especially in connection with their possible impact on Ludwig Wittgenstein’s later thinking. This makes a direct rather than indirect examination of Sraffa’s philosophical thinking possible, and also shifts the focus from his relationship to Wittgenstein to his own thinking per se. I suggest that the previous focus, necessary as it may have been prior to the availability of the unpublished materials, involved some distortion of Sraffa’s thinking by virtue of its framing in terms of Wittgenstein’s concerns as reflected in the concerns of scholars primarily interested in the change in the his thinking. This paper seeks to locate these early convictions in this historical context, and then go on to treat the development of Sraffa’s philosophical thinking as a process beginning from this point, arguing that his thinking underwent one significant shift around 1931, but still retained its early key assumptions. Thus the approach I will take to Sraffa’s philosophical thinking is to explain it as a process of development largely within a single framework defined by his view of how modern science determines the scope and limits upon economic theorizing

(WP 2011-01) Kenneth Boulding as a Moral Scientist

Kenneth Boulding’s AEA presidential address argued that economics is a moral science. His view derived from his general systems theory thinking, his three systems view of human society, and his early contributions to evolutionary economics. Boulding’s argument that economics could not be value-free should be distinguished from other well-known views of economics as a moral science, such as Gunnar Myrdal’s. This paper discusses the development and nature of Boulding’s thinking about economics as a moral science in the larger context of his thinking

(WP 2019-01) Stratification Economics as an Economics of Exclusion

Stratification Economics (SE) is an emergent sub-field in economics, but its JEL classification misrepresents its content and its relationship to the whole of economics. This paper first develops a more accurate characterization of SE by identifying its differences with Mainstream Economics (ME), its commonalities with economics in a broad sense, and how the combination of these differences and commonalities define it as a distinct research program. It then applies this definition to an economic goods taxonomy that makes a distinction between local public goods and common pool goods to interpret SE’S distinct research program as an economics of exclusion. The paper closes with a discussion of how SE might explain socioeconomic change in social group identity terms