This book champions the view that economics is a social science, and that, moreover, it may serve as a new paradigm for the social sciences. Economics is taken to be part of those sciences which deal with actual problems of society by providing insights, improving our understanding and suggesting solutions. I am aware that the way problems are addressed here has little in common with economics as it is generally understood today; most economists make strong efforts to imitate the exact sciences. Economics tends to become a branch of applied mathematics; the majority of all publications in professional journals and books are full of axioms, lemmas and proofs, and they are much concerned with purely formal deductions. Often, when the results are translated into verbal language, or when they are applied empirically, disappointingly little of interest remains. The book wants to show that another type of economics exists which is surprisingly little known. This type of economics has its own particular point of view. It centres on a concept of man, or a model of human behaviour, which differs from those normally used in other social sciences such as sociology, political science, law, or psychology. I do not, however, claim that economics is the only legitimate social science. On the contrary, economics can provide useful insights only in collaboration with the other social Vll Vlll PREFACE sciences-an aspect which has been disregarded by mathematically oriented economics.

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Authors and Affiliations

University of Zürich, Switzerland

Bruno S. Frey

Bibliographic Information

Book Title: Economics as a Science of Human Behaviour
Book Subtitle: Towards a New Social Science Paradigm
Authors: Bruno S. Frey
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-5187-4
Publisher: Springer New York, NY
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive
Copyright Information: Kluwer Academic Publishers Boston 1999
Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-8434-2Published: 31 July 1999
Softcover ISBN: 978-0-7923-8471-7Published: 31 July 1999
eBook ISBN: 978-1-4615-5187-4Published: 01 December 2013
Edition Number: 2
Number of Pages: XIII, 249
Topics: Public Economics, Economic Policy, Political Science

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Table of contents (12 chapters)

Front Matter

Human Behaviour

Front Matter

Applications to Various Areas

Front Matter

Extensions

Front Matter

Back Matter

About this book

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Authors and Affiliations

University of Zürich, Switzerland

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