Despite the idiosyncratic behavior of individuals, empirical regularities exist in social and economic systems. These regularities often arise from simple underlying mechanisms which, analogous to the natural sciences, can be expressed as universal principles or laws. In this essay, I discuss the similarities between economic and natural phenomena and argue that it is advantageous for economist...

background: social capital involves a set of norms available in social systems which improves the interaction between people and reduces the costs of interactions and communications. considering the importance of social capital, this research is aimed to study the social capital and factors affecting it among students of tehran university of medical sciences. methods: 400 students were particip...

Since 2008, the government of South Australia has been using a Health in All Policies (HiAP) approach to achieve their strategic plan (South Australia Strategic Plan of 2004). In this commentary, we summarize some of the strengths and contributions of the innovative evaluation framework that was developed by an embedded team of academic researchers. To inform how the use of HiAP is evaluated mo...

Numerous laboratory studies find that minor nuances of presentation and description change behavior in ways that are inconsistent with standard economic models. How much do these context effects matter in natural settings, when consumers make large, real decisions and have the opportunity to learn from experience? We report on a field experiment designed to address this question. A South Africa...

Nearly one in three security practitioners believe that the organization they work for under-funds information security efforts. Rational choice and economic models have been developed to help decision makers determine the optimal amount they should spend to protect a set of information assets. These models presume investment decisions are rationally made, despite long-standing behavioral and d...

In the last two decades, the scope and volume of higher education research has grown enormously. But the debates about what it is and what it is for are by no means settled. Questions about its institutional settings and functions; its relationships with disciplinary interests and cross-disciplinary themes in the humanities and social sciences; the most appropriate methodologies for it; the blu...