Tag Archives: homo economicus

Studies have determined that the Homo economicus personality is an extremely rare one. Instead, most humans are marked by a deep capacity for reciprocity, cooperation and selflessness.… TruthoutHow Economists Tricked Us Into Thinking Capitalism Works Robert R. RaymondSee also In India, the ‘development’ paradigm is premised on moving farmers out of agriculture and into the cities to work in construction, manufacturing or the service sector, despite these sectors not creating anything like...

Lynn Parramore reviews Suprita Rajan's A Tale of Two Capitalisms, which is about the intersection of economics with anthropology and sociology and the distinction between homo economicus of economics and homo communis (aka homo socialis) of anthropology and sociology — and ethics. Ethos (ἦθος, ἔθος; plurals: ethe, ἤθη; ethea, ἤθεα) is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" (as in ἤθεα ἵππων "the habitats of horses", Iliad 6.511, 15.268),[2] "custom, habit", equivalent to...

I believe that these corrosive moral claims derive from a fundamentally flawed understanding of how market capitalism works, grounded in the dubious assumption that human beings are “homo economicus”: perfectly selfish, perfectly rational, and relentlessly self-maximizing. It is this behavioral model upon which all the other models of orthodox economics are built. And it is nonsense. The last 40 years of research across multiple scientific disciplines has proven, with certainty, that homo...

Standard economic theory assumes that humans behave fully rationally and are able to objectively calculate the value (or cost) of the different choices they are presented with. In fact, we pride ourselves on our rationality. Different from the animals, we humans have the unique capacity for logical thought and rational decision making. Or do we? According to behavioral economist Dan Ariely, we should be less proud of ourselves. In his entertaining book Predictably Irrational, Ariely...

I think Alexander Beunder attacks the wrong target — rationality. The foundational assumption of homo economics is methodological individualism based on a hidden assumption of ontological individualism, which is characteristic of many forms of liberalism as a philosophical position. The major opposing view is that of Aristotle, that humans are social animals. Thus, the key conceptual distinction is between homo economicus and homo socialis. The basic assumption of homo socialis is that...

Peter Fleming tells what his book, The Death of Homo Economicus, is about. Economic Sociology and Political Economy Is Homo Economicus Dead? Peter Fleming | Professor of Business and Society at Cass Business School, City, University of London