The Economic Ideas of Ordinary People: From Preferences to Trade

ISBN-13: 9780415614405 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 370 str.

David M. Levy

Opis

Human actions result from a compound of animal desires, constraints and the words we use to talk about desires and constraints. Modern economics has developed complex theories to explain the operation of both desires and constraints but has neglected the language people use when they talk about them. First published in 1992, The Economic Ideas of Ordinary People discusses how we talk about our economic activitiees and how our talk influences our action.

Spis treści

Part I Introduction and background  1. Why worry about the economic ideas of ordinary people?  Part II The demand for ideas  2. Adam Smith and the Texas A&M rats  3. Utility-enhancing consumption constraints  4. Ethics and the basics of logic  Part III The supply of ideas  5. Adam Smith's 'natural law' and contractual society  6. Who monitors the monitors? with Susan Feigenbaum  7. Property, justice and judgement  Part IV Equilibrium ideas  8. Rational choice inm the Homeric epics  9. The statistical basis of Athenian and American constitutional theory  10. Fame and the supply of heroics  Part V A competitive episode: the Malthusian controversy  11. Ricardo and the iron law  12. Some normative aspects of the Malthusian controversy  13. Libertarian communists, Malthusians and J. S. Mill - who is both  Part IV Objections and applications  14. Must one believe to obey  15. S. T. Coleridge replies to Adam Smith's 'pernicious opinion'  16. The impossibility of a complete methadological individualist  17. Spinoza and the cost of thinking  18. The myth of monopoly