Schumpeter’s and Hayek’s view of market coordination as being not about efficiency, but about endogenous change and never-ending discovery has been increasingly recognized even by the mainstream of economics. Underlying this view is the notion of creative learning agents who bring about novelty. We argue that apart from the challenges it poses for positive theorizing, novelty (be it technologic...

The paper discusses the sense in which the changes undergone by normative economics in the 20 century can be said to be progressive. A simple criterion is proposed to decide whether a sequence of normative theories is progressive. This criterion is put to use on the historical transition from the new welfare economics to social choice theory. The paper reconstructs this classic case, and eventu...

A vast literature shows that individuals frequently violate normative principles in reasoning. In evaluating the relevance of these findings for psychology, economics, and related disciplines, it is natural to ask whether reasoning errors reflect random aberrations or systematic biases. One straightforward way to approach this question is to test their persistence at the aggregate level. In thi...

Welfare economics analyzes societal well-being based on individual levels of self-evaluated happiness or “utility.” All human emotions, including what economists label as utility, are evolutionary creations, shaped by natural selection for the sole purpose altering individuals’ behavior in ways that maximize their relative reproductive success. Because origins and nature motivations, welfare ha...

The paper discusses the sense in which the changes undergone by normative economics in the 20th century can be said to be progressive. A simple criterion is proposed to decide whether a sequence of normative theories is progressive. This criterion is put to use on the historical transition from the new welfare economics to social choice theory. The paper reconstructs this classic case, and even...