The essays in this volume were a challenge to me to write. I am an economist to the core, inclined to evaluate most observed behavior and public policies with conventional neoclassical theory. The essays represent my attempt to come to grips with the meaning and importance of what I try to do as a professional economist. They reflect my attempt to acquire a new and improved understanding of the usefulness and limitations of the writings of professional economists, especially my own. In this regard, although I hope others will find the thoughts useful, the volume represents a personal statement of how one economist views his and others' work. For that reason the discussion is often openly normative, tinged with the conviction that social discourse is more than costs and benefits and that economics cannot be fully evaluated by the methods - economic methods - that are the subject of the evaluation. These essays could not have been written without considerable encouragement and help from colleagues and friends. The following people are recognized for having read one or more chapters and for having contributed critical, substantive comments: Diana Bailey, Wilfred Beckerman, Geoffrey Brennan, William Briet, James Buchanan, Delores Martin, David Maxwell, Mary Ann McKenzie, Warren Samuels, Robert Staaf, Richard Wagner, Karen Vaughn, and Bruce Yandle. I am very much in their debt. However, they should not be held accountable for any of the positions taken and any errors that may remain.

The debate on the physical limits and constraints to the economic growth of globalized society is now widespread. This book explores the physical and economic aspects of the conflict between humans, with their thoughtless focus on growth through material production, and environmental constraints. In the context of the looming shortage of material resources and the latest science on climate change, Physical Limits to Economic Growth offers new insights which provide a broad and comprehensive picture of the conflict between humans and environmental constraints. The authors’ approach goes beyond the boundaries of specialized disciplines to explore climate change, resource depletion, technical innovation and the interactions between these within the socio-economic-institutional systems we live in. This volume looks at opportunities for rethinking these systems if we moved away from fossil fuel dependence, while considering the status of current mainstream economic thinking around this subject. Physical Limits to Economic Growth provides a genuine interdisciplinary examination of the physical limits to economic growth. It will be of interest to both students and academics in various disciplines in the areas of natural sciences, climate change and economics.

Ideas cannot be imported wholesale from economics to political science. Through empirical evidence and theoretical analysis the author argues that sociological as well as economic theories must be accommodated.

This book shows how Marshall's distinctive contributions to modern economics grew out of his early development of a neo-Hegelian social philosophy.

This book argues that Lionel Robbins’s construction of the economics field’s organizing cornerstone, scarcity—and all that has been derived from it from economists in Robbins’s time to today—no longer can generate general consent among economists. Since Robbins’ Essay, economists have learned more than Robbins and his cohorts could have imagined about human decision making and about the human brain that is the lynchpin of human decision making. This book argues however that behavioral economists and neuroeconomists, in pointing to numerous ways people fall short of perfectly rational decisions (anomalies, biases, and downright errors), have saved conventional economics from such self-contradictions in what could be viewed as a wayward approach. This book posits that the human brain is the ultimate scarce resource, and that a focus on the brain can bring a new foundation for economics and can save the discipline from hostile criticisms from a variety of non-economists (many psychologists).

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the structure, strategy and methods of assessment of orthodox theoretical economics.

Explores how society can learn to care about the future

This collection brings together the essays of one of the foremost American philosophers of economics. Cumulatively they offer fresh perspectives on foundational questions such as: what sort of science is economics? and how successful can economists be in acquiring knowledge of their subject matter?