Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics

Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics

Author: John B. Davis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2024-02

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1009438239

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Mainstream economics assumes economic agents act and make decisions to maximize their utility. This model of economic behavior, based on rational choice theory, has come under increasing attack in economics because it does not accurately reflect the way people behave and reason. The shift towards a more realistic account of economic agents has been mostly associated with the rise of behavioral economics, which views individuals through the lens of bounded rationality. Identity, Capabilities, and Changing Economics goes further and uses identity analysis to build on this critique of the utility conception of individuals, arguing it should be replaced by a conception of economic agents in an uncertain world as socially embedded and identified with their capabilities. Written by one of the world's leading philosophers of economics, the book develops a new approach to economics' theory of the individual, explaining individuals as adaptive and reflexive rather than utility maximizing.


Individuals and Identity in Economics

Individuals and Identity in Economics

Author: John B. Davis

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2010-09-30

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1139495461

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This book examines the different conceptions of the individual that have emerged in recent new approaches in economics, including behavioral economics, experimental economics, social preferences approaches, game theory, neuroeconomics, evolutionary and complexity economics, and the capability approach. These conceptions are classified according to whether they seek to revise the traditional atomist individual conception, put new emphasis on interaction and relations between individuals, account for individuals as evolving and self-organizing, and explain individuals in terms of capabilities. The method of analysis uses two identity criteria for distinguishing and re-identifying individuals to determine whether these different individual conceptions successfully identify individuals. Successful individual conceptions account for sub-personal and supra-personal bounds on single individual explanations. The former concerns the fragmentation of individuals into multiple selves; the latter concerns the dissolution of individuals into the social. The book develops an understanding of bounded individuality, seen as central to the defense of human rights.


History, Methodology and Identity for a 21st Century Social Economics

History, Methodology and Identity for a 21st Century Social Economics

Author: Wilfred Dolfsma

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 042957536X

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This book seeks to advance social economic analysis, economic methodology, and the history of economic thought in the context of twenty-first-century scholarship and socio-economic concerns. Bringing together carefully selected chapters by leading scholars it examines the central contributions that John Davis has made to various areas of scholarship. In recent decades, criticisms of mainstream economics have rekindled interest in a number of areas of scholarly inquiry that were frequently ignored by mainstream economic theory and practice during the second half of the twentieth century, including social economics, economic methodology and history of economic thought. This book contributes to a growing literature on the revival of these areas of scholarship and highlights the pivotal role that John Davis’s work has played in the ongoing revival. Together, the international panel of contributors show how Davis’s insights in complexity theory, identity, and stratification are key to understanding a reconfigured economic methodology. They also reveal that Davis’s willingness to draw from multiple academic disciplines gives us a platform for interrogating mainstream economics and provides the basis for a humane yet scientific alternative. This unique volume will be essential reading for advanced students and researchers across social economics, history of economic thought, economic methodology, political economy and philosophy of social science.


Identity Economics

Identity Economics

Author: Meral Uzunöz Altan

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-08

Total Pages: 197

ISBN-13: 1040088074

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Critics contend that identity economics overemphasizes social identities as drivers of economic activity, potentially obscuring other elements including personal preferences, incentives, and market pressures. Identity-related notions are challenging to measure and quantify meaningfully and rigorously, which is one of the most common criticisms. Identity economics has long been debated by economic scientists and practitioners, but it is still considered to be in its infancy, which also draws attention to the absence of a clear consensus and solid empirical support. This book fills that gap by providing an in-depth analysis of the main claims made in favour of identity economics. It explores the reliability of identity-based explanations, the difficulties with measurement and quantification, concerns about overgeneralization and essentialism, the function of economic institutions, policy implications, a lack of agreement and empirical evidence, and considerations of intersectionality and multidimensionality. The book considers three interrelated aims. Firstly, it familiarizes readers with the concept of Identity Economics. Secondly, and essentially, it persuades a larger audience of the relevance and creativity of this sector, and thirdly, it advocates for the applicability of the approach to the field of knowledge. The focus of the examination centres around these three objectives. Few would argue that identity impacts our decisions but given that solid theory is predicated on good abstraction, the real question is whether we lose anything by excluding identity from the theory. The book skilfully weaves together the literature from several disciplines including regional, gender, labour, social areas of studies, thus academics, students, and researchers in these fields will find the individual contributions useful for their respective areas of study.


Words, Objects and Events in Economics

Words, Objects and Events in Economics

Author: Peter Róna

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9783030526740

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This open access book examines from a variety of perspectives the disappearance of moral content and ethical judgment from the models employed in the formulation of modern economic theory, and some of the papers contain important proposals about how moral judgment could be reintroduced in economic theory. The chapters collected in this volume result from the favorable reception of the first volume of the Virtues in Economics series and represent further contributions to the themes set out in that volume: (i) examining the philosophical and methodological fallacies of this turn in modern economic theory that the removal of the moral motivation of economic agents from modern economic theory has entailed; and (ii) proposing a return descriptive economics as the means with which the moral content of economic life could be restored in economic theory. This book is of interest to researchers and students of the methodology of economics, ethics, philosophers concerned with agency and economists who build economic models that rest in the intention of the agent.--


Identity Change and Foreign Policy

Identity Change and Foreign Policy

Author: Linus Hagstrom

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-10-05

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 1317394852

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Identity has become an explicit focus of International Relations theory in the past two to three decades, with one case attracting and puzzling many early identity scholars: Japan. These constructivist scholars typically ascribed Japan a ‘pacifist’ or ‘antimilitarist’ identity – an identity which they believed was constructed through the adherence to ‘peaceful norms’ and ‘antimilitarist culture’. Due to the alleged resilience of such adherences, little change in Japan’s identity and its international relations was predicted. However, in recent years, Japan’s foreign and security policies have begun to change, in spite of these seemingly stable norms and culture. This book seeks to address these changes through a pioneering engagement with recent developments in identity theory. In particular, most chapters theorize identity as a product of processes of differentiation. Through detailed case analysis, they argue that Japan’s identity is produced and reproduced, but also transformed, through the drawing of boundaries between ‘self’ and ‘other’. In particular, they stress the role of emotions and identity entrepreneurs as catalysts for identity change. With the current balance between resilience and change, contributors emphasize that more drastic foreign and security policy transformations might loom just beyond the horizon. This book was originally published as a special issue of The Pacific Review.


Relearning to E-learn

Relearning to E-learn

Author: M. S. Bowles

Publisher: Academic Monographs

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 0522851266

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Examines the issue of how people communicate and learn in the electronic environment. It explores many of the problems associated with the newness of e-learning and the diverse approaches to e- learning adopted by the academic, government, corporate and community sectors.


An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change

An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change

Author: Richard R. Nelson

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1985-10-15

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 9780674041431

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This book contains the most sustained and serious attack on mainstream, neoclassical economics in more than forty years. Nelson and Winter focus their critique on the basic question of how firms and industries change overtime. They marshal significant objections to the fundamental neoclassical assumptions of profit maximization and market equilibrium, which they find ineffective in the analysis of technological innovation and the dynamics of competition among firms. To replace these assumptions, they borrow from biology the concept of natural selection to construct a precise and detailed evolutionary theory of business behavior. They grant that films are motivated by profit and engage in search for ways of improving profits, but they do not consider them to be profit maximizing. Likewise, they emphasize the tendency for the more profitable firms to drive the less profitable ones out of business, but they do not focus their analysis on hypothetical states of industry equilibrium. The results of their new paradigm and analytical framework are impressive. Not only have they been able to develop more coherent and powerful models of competitive firm dynamics under conditions of growth and technological change, but their approach is compatible with findings in psychology and other social sciences. Finally, their work has important implications for welfare economics and for government policy toward industry.


Global Trends 2040

Global Trends 2040

Author: National Intelligence Council

Publisher: Cosimo Reports

Published: 2021-03

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 9781646794973

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"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.


Exploring the Professional Identity of Management Consultants

Exploring the Professional Identity of Management Consultants

Author: Anthony F. Buono

Publisher: IAP

Published: 2013-03-01

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1623961734

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The volume is based on the presentations and discussions from the Fifth European Conference on Management Consulting sponsored by the Management Consulting Division of the Academy of Management, which took place June, 2011 at Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The conference theme – Exploring the Professional Identity of Management Consultants – attempted to capture the highly ambiguous social status of this young and emerging profession. Management consulting does not have professional standards or accreditation criteria like those found in medicine or law, there are low barriers to entry, and a broad range of tasks are undertaken in the name of consulting. As a result, a crucial aspect of what constitutes such a loosely defined profession is the identity of its members. The professional identity of management consultants is continuously developing through the interplay of how consultants are seen and valued by clients as well as in the larger society, and how consultancy firms and consultants identify and position themselves. This theme includes a variety of topics, ranging from the interaction between consultants and their clients, consultant rhetoric and self-presentation, and the plethora of books, media and public discourse on consulting, to human resource policies and practices, knowledge development activities of consultancy firms, career and life stories of consultants and consultancies, and consulting associations, accreditation bodies, and education programs. All of these factors contribute, either directly or indirectly, to identity construction in the field of management consulting.