ABSTRACTBehavioral economics may be considered as neoclassical behavioral economics (or ‘as-if’ behavioral economics), which adopts a neoclassical normative model of rationality and explains bias and mistakes as deviations from that model, or it could be envisioned as ‘smart behavioral economics’ that rejects standard rationality of neoclassical economics and adopts ecological rationality to explain that simple strategies, when adapted to the environment, will produce clever decisions. While, feminist economics fully rejects neoclassical economics model of rationality as a determining factor for the development of patriarchy, and adopts a more complex cognitive approach, gender economics adopts the rational choice framework as a consistent model to describe gendered phenomena. The aim of this paper therefore is to demonstrate that the concept of rationality adopted by ‘smart’ behavioral economics makes it consistent with feminist economics, while the concept of rationality adopted by ‘as-if’ behavioral economics makes it consistent with gender economics.

It has been asked whether construction economics has achieved the position of an academic (sub-)discipline. The main question addressed here is if there are signs of a widening gap between construction economics and mainstream economics. Full text searches in three top economics journals and in Construction Management and Economics have been performed, as well as an analysis of how a broader range of economics journals have combined the construction industry topic with other topics. Results include that authors in the three top economics journals never cite articles in Construction Management and Economics, although citations in the opposite direction are frequent. Economics journals in general are found to combine the Journal of Economic Literature L74 code (Construction) mostly with codes from financial economics, macroeconomics and economic development. For 2013–2016, the strongest new combinations with construction are with Firm Behaviour – Empirical Analysis, Accounting and Climate – Natural Disasters and their Management. Finally, the importance for construction economists of access to big data is emphasized.

This paper critically evaluates the current decline of the relationship between economics and the history of economics, and proposes a framework called the panorama-cum-scenario model for the practice of the history of economics. Starting with the Hegelian thesis that the history of economics is economics itself, the paper argues that such a relationship is necessary but not sufficient because the history of economics is a metatheory addressed to economic theory. The history of economics needs a panoramic view of the subject and a scenario for the construction, interpretation, and evaluation of the system of economics. The panorama-cum-scenario model enables us to work on the history of economics not only by historical and rational reconstruction but also by global reconstruction. Nietzsche's anti-Hegelian viewpoint and Heidegger's hermeneutical standpoint are useful for identifying the role of historical research in developing economic knowledge based on the panorama-cum-scenario model. Several approaches to the history of economics are examined in light of the panorama-cum-scenario model. Schumpeter's history of economics is interpreted as an example of the panorama-cum-scenario model.

In this survey article, we review results from behavioural and experimental economics that have a potential application in the field of personnel economics. While personnel economics started out with a clean economic perspective on human resource management (HRM), recently it has broadened its perspective by increasingly taking into account the results from laboratory experiments. Besides having inspired theory-building, the integration of behavioural economics into personnel economics has gone hand in hand with a strengthening of empirical analyses (field experiments and survey data) complementing the findings from the laboratory. Concentrating on employee compensation as one particular field of application, we show that for personnel economics there is indeed much to be learnt from the recent developments in behavioural economics. Moreover, integrating behavioural economics into personnel economics bears the chance of eventually reconciling personnel economics and classic HRM analysis that has a long tradition of relying on social psychology as a classical point of reference.

The paper explores Buddhist economics as a major alternative to the Western economic mindset. Buddhism is centred on want negation and purification of the human character. Buddhist economics, developed by Schumacher, Payutto, Welford and others, challenges the basic principles of modern Western economics: (1) profit-maximisation, (2) cultivating desires, (3) introducing markets, (4) instrumental use of the world, and (5) self-interest-based ethics. Buddhist economics proposes alternative principles such as minimising suffering, simplifying desires, non-violence, genuine care, and generosity. It is suggested that Buddhist economics is not a system but a strategy, which can be applied in any economic setting.

Just as Newtonian mechanics breaks down when we look at the constituent pieces of our universe—subatomic particles—neoclassical economics breaks down when we look at the constituent pieces of our society—individual people. At the scale of subatomic particles, quantum mechanics provides new foundations for understanding the physical world; at the scale of individual decisionmaking, behavioral economics promises new foundations for understanding the social, economic, and legal worlds. As this Article explains, this analogy between Newtonian and quantum physics, on the one hand, and neoclassical and behavioral economics, on the other hand, has much to reveal about law and economics. With the help of numerous examples of key finding in behavioral law and economics, I take three principles from quantum mechanics (the uncertainty principle, the correspondence principle, and the quantum principle) and show how analogous principles in economics help illuminate the future trajectory of law and economics. I then seek to accelerate this trajectory by proposing an agenda for strengthening behavioral law and economics through a stronger grounding in theory, and specifically a “quantum” theory of decisionmaking. Along the way, the analysis leads me to challenge some common misconceptions about law and economics: behavioral and neoclassical approaches to law and economics are not rivals, but partners; simplistic and artificial assumptions about human behavior remain a problem in law and economics, but most acutely in behavioral law and economics; and the notion that neoclassical economics promotes a deregulatory agenda and behavioral economics promotes a pro-regulatory agenda is, as often as not, exactly backwards.

The editors of Kyklos have asked the question: Is there a European economics? This short essay tries to give an answer by first trying to provide a framework for a sensible answer in economics, and then following suit by illustrating how in the context of this frame-work, the answer can be given. In so doing, the essay touches on theories of regulation, the ORDO-approach, the sub-discipline of law and economics and the problem of European institutions as they are different from American ones and different from those typically assumed but never explicated in textbook renditions bearing on economic policy.

The Random Samples item about a new Ph.D. program in ecological economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (“EcoPioneering at RPI”, 16 May, p. 1037) could leave readers with the mistaken impression that “conventionally trained economists” shun all environmental issues. Ph.D.-level courses in environmental economics thrive at dozens of institutions [check the listings of graduate programs courtesy of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) at ]. Since the field evolved from the older disciplines of land economics and agricultural economics, the natural home for these Ph.D. programs at many institutions is a department of agricultural and resource economics. At an institution such as the University of California at Los Angeles, however, with no “ag econ” department, we offer a Ph.D. field in environmental and resource economics within the ”conventional” Department of Economics. The Random Sample item states that “in addition to standard courses, the new program has at its core three new ones: environmental economics … natural-resource economics … and ecological economics.” The descriptions of the first two courses are entirely standard, and they are taught widely. The third course tends to be interdisciplinary, and is a poorer fit for most economics programs because the subject matter is less amenable to rigorous modeling and empirical verification. It is no more and no less an orphaned subject than any other interdisciplinary endeavor. Economists are trained to focus on matters of fact (how people and firms make choices, and therefore how these choices might be influenced by available policy measures). What they “fiercely resist” is the temptation to make value judgments regarding the choices that people ought to make. Economic analysis, ideally, is dispassionate. Economists do not consider it their prerogative to make policy, only to carefully and throughly inform the policy process. Some aspects of ecological economics do not fit this mold. There is a prevalent misconception that an economist is no more than a cost accountant—the corporate bean counter who tells management that it is too expensive to take measures to protect the environment, a professional naysayer, and “environmental enemy number 1.” The 800 or more members of AERE would likely disagree.

This review of Yahya Madra’s Late Neoclassical Economics centers on a claim made by mainstream economics to have surpassed the narrow horizon of neoclassical economics, understood as general equilibrium or Walrasian economics, having differentiated into a pluralist field. Through a detailed study of neoclassical economics, Madra distills the misplaced nature of this claim and disputes the propositions that neoclassical economics is nothing but Walrasian and that its new diverse theories belong to the nonneoclassical domain. Rather, the diverse theories of mainstream economics are shown to share with Walrasian economics, and with one another, a common problematic of theoretical humanism in the form of reconciling individual and aggregative/collective rationality in order to achieve a socioeconomic order. This review discussion ends by raising some issues that are absent or latently present in Madra’s book.

In the context of higher education concerns surrounding economics enrolments in Australia and industry concern about the quality of graduates, an Economics Internship was developed as a final year elective course in an Australian business degree. This paper details qualitative and quantitative evidence supporting the positive impact of the Economics Internship in terms of students’ generic skills, career and vocational skills, self-efficacy and satisfaction. The Economics Internship makes economics ‘real’ for students through their exposure to a dynamic learning environment and, in light of the evidence, is a model which demands further consideration and investment within economics education.