The discipline of economics is built upon two immutable facts: that the wants of mankind are considerable, perhaps unlimited, while the resources available to satisfy them are scarce. The study of economics is concerned with way in which resources are used to satisfy wants. It has been described succinctly as the science of scarcity. At one level economics is simply the study of what is which g...

Rational choice theory is pragmatically used by mainstream economics to explain and defend the existence and behavior of prevailing social and economic institutions as being optimal. Every deviation in actual individual and institutional behavior from the optimum is attributed to imperfections in the agents’ ability to pursue the optimal actions rather than the implausibility of the underlying ...

This paper aims to highlight the absolute competitiveness between positive and normative economics. The article presents this controversy as a pretext analyse specific field of operation ecological approach in economics is needed complex age increasing deficits confronting threats biological social sustainability. Reliable data from biology, physics, chemistry medicine inform us what dangerous....

We investigate the positive and normative consequences of child-labor restrictions for economic aggregates and welfare. We argue that even though the laissez-faire outcome may be inefficient, there are usually better policies to cure these inefficiencies than the imposition of a child-labor ban. Given this finding, we investigate the potential political-economic reasons behind the emergence and...

This paper provides some reflections on the new macroeconomics of model uncertainty. Model uncertainty is argued to have important positive and normative implications for macroeconomic analysis. We provide a general discussion of the relationship between macroeconomic models that assume a specific model and those that do not and provide some examples from the existing literature. Our discussion...

CONTENTS WHY SHOULD MATHEMA'IICS PI-AY A ROLE IN PSYCHOLOGY? ............................ Structure. Pattern. and Process ........................................................................................... What Keeps Mathematical Psvchology . from Being an 0.xvmoron Y ................................... FOUR DISTINCTIONS .....................................................................

Innovation and the adoption of new ideas is fundamental to economic progress. Here we examine the underlying economics of the market for ideas. From a positive perspective, we examine how such markets function with and without government intervention. From a normative perspective, we examine the pitfalls of existing institutions, and how they might be improved. We highlight recent research by u...

The classical theory of rational choice is built on several important internal consistency conditions. In recent years, the reasonableness of those internal consistency conditions has been questioned and criticized, and several responses to accommodate such criticisms have been proposed in the literature. This paper develops a general framework to accommodate the issues raised by the criticisms...