It is my great honor to accept the Editor-in-Chief position, beginning January 1, 2019, from my good friend Professor and Max Planck Director Ulrich Witt. Over many years, I have worked with Professor Witt as a co-author, as an author of articles submitted to the Journal of Bioeconomics, as a reviewer, and as the guest editor of the special issue of the journal on Experimental Evolution and Economics.

In it not an exaggeration to say that, through his behavior, Professor Witt has made me a better person. I have observed his insight, his persistent and creative effort, and his professionalism. In all my interactions, Ulrich saw the best in the other people, engaged in a productive manner, and, in doing so, made the journal better. The net result is that we are all better off as the Journal of Bioeconomics has contributed to the growth in human knowledge. No finer honor accrues to any academic.

We are all fortunate that Professor Witt has agree to remain involved in the Journal of Bioeconomics, serving as co-editor along with Michael Ghiselin and David Sloan Wilson.

The journal’s mission will remain the same:

The Journal of Bioeconomics is devoted to creative interdisciplinary dialogues between biologists and economists. It promotes the mutual exchange of theories, methods, and data where biology can help explaining economic behavior and the nature of the human economy; and where economics is conducive to understanding the economy of nature.

I have two personal passions, which, at the margin, may alter the journal’s trajectory.

First, I see a particular role for biology to improve economics (Burnham 2013). In particular, by scientific investigations into the foundational assumptions of the field. Economic results are derived from a core set of assumptions regarding human nature, the axioms of economics. These axioms are both exogenous and contentious (Burnham et al. 2015). Biology should, I have argued, and I believe, play a central role in improving the economic understanding of human nature. The goal is a more accurate and comprehensive economics.

Second, interdisciplinary work is important, challenging, and often lonely. As a graduate student, I dropped my first biological manifesto off in person on the desks of a dozen famous professors. On that day, in the era before cell phones, I was afraid that some of the first recipients would call my house before I returned. Accordingly, I rushed my deliveries and returned home. To this day, it is not clear that anyone ever read a word of my revolutionary document, and certainly no one ever contacted me.

To kindred spirits, who are working outside of existing fields, know that you have a friend at the Journal of Bioeconomics. The Statue of Liberty is inscribed with “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Similarly, I say send me your manuscripts labelled by others as wretched refuse, containing your heretical ideas yearning to be published.