Fabio
I was giving a talk about my research on the politics of the anti-war movement at the GMU econ department’s public choice seminar. At lunch, my good friend Bryan Caplan and his colleague Ilea Rainer asked me: what are five things that economists should learn from sociology? We didn’t get through all five, but here are three that came up:
- Sociologists have a deep appreciation of imitation and conformity as a basic feature of human behavior. Economists rarely model this explicitly. If it is so important, as sociologists have shown, then economists are really missing the boat.
- Social networks/social structure matters. Simple idea but few economists sit around and model the effects of social structure. Usually the best you get is a recognition that “norms” matter. My argument is that economists should care because social structures produce opportunities (e.g., you hear about jobs through networks). Most models assume…
View original post 80 more words
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments