It is a pleasure to reply to Caplan’s (1999) critique of Austrian economics. Unlike other such recent reactions1 this one shows evidence of great familiarity with the Austrian (praxeological) literature, and a deep interest in its analytical foundations. Thus, Caplan correctly identifies the works of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard as the core of what sets Austrian economics apart from ...

Behavioral economics confronts a problem when it argues for its scientific relevance based on claims of superior empirical realism while defending models that are almost surely wrong as descriptions of true psychological processes (e.g., prospect theory, hyperbolic discounting, and social preference utility functions). Behavioral economists frequently observe that constrained optimization of ne...

In a recent article George Boyer and Robert Smith describe the development of the neoclassical tradition in labor economics. In this paper I reexamine this subject and provide an alternative account of the evolution of thought in the field. I argue Boyer and Smith incorrectly define both the institutional and neoclassical approaches to labor market analysis. The essence of institutional economi...

1. Introduction The question of value has been central to economics since its inception as a scientific discipline. The Classical economists thought deeply about the distinction between use value and exchange value and the relationship between human happiness and the market prices of goods and services. With the development of marginal value theory, beginning in the 1870s, the value problem see...

a r t i c l e i n f o Policy prescriptions for sustainable consumption have been dominated by neoclassical economics, which is built around the notions of market equilibrium, utility maximization, and exogenous preferences. There are concerns that neoclassical economics is inadequate to guide policy prescriptions in the presence of evolving preferences and complex dynamics. Evolutionary economi...

Neoclassical and psychological models of consumer behavior often make divergent predictions for the welfare effects of paternalistic policies, leaving wide scope for researchers’ choice of a model to influence their policy conclusions. We develop a framework to reduce this model uncertainty and apply it to administrative data on consumer decision making in Medicare Part D. Consumers’ choices fo...