How do economists understand and measure normal social phenomena?

Identifying economic strains in activities such as learning, group formation, discrimination, and peer dynamics requires sophisticated data and tools as well as a grasp of prior scholarship. In this volume leading economists provide an authoritative summary of social choice economics, from norms and conventions to the exchange of discrete resources. Including both theoretical and empirical perspectives, their work provides the basis for models that can offer new insights in applied economic analyses.
Reviews the recent approaches that enable economists to separate influences of culture from those caused by economic and institutional environments
Explores the recent willingness among economists to consider new arguments in the utility function
Presumes that these investigations can eventually be translated into policies

In recent years economists have begun to use the techniques of non-linear dynamics to show that some apparently erratic and turbulent economic phenomena reflect subtle underlying patterns. How do cyclic and chaotic dynamics arise in economic models of equilibrium? How can empirical methods be used to detect nonlinearities and cyclic and chaotic structures in economic models? In examining these questions, this book brings together the most significant work that has been done to date in economics-based chaos theory. Selected here particularly for the economist who is not a specialist in chaos theory, the essays, some previously unpublished and others not widely available, describe a new tool for understanding business cycles, stabilization policy, and forecasting. The contributors to the volume are William J. Baumol, Jess Benhabib, Michele Boldrin, William A. Brock, Richard H. Day, Raymond J. Deneckere, Allan Drazen, Jean-Michel Grandmont, Kenneth L. Judd, Bruno Jullien, Guy Laroque, Blake LeBaron, Bruce McNevin, Luigi Montrucchio, Salih Nefti, Kazuo Nishimura, James B. Ramsey, Pietro Reichlin, Philip Rothman, Chera L. Sayers, Jos A. Scheinkman, Wayne Shafer, William Whitesell, Edward N. Wolff, and Michael Woodford.

How can economists define social preferences and interactions?

Culture, familial beliefs, religion, and other sources contain the origins of social preferences. Those preferences--the desire for social status, for instance, or the disinclination to receive financial support--often accompany predictable economic outcomes. Through the use of new economic data and tools, our contributors survey an array of social interactions and decisions that typify homo economicus. Their work brings order to the sometimes conflicting claims that countries, environments, beliefs, and other influences make on our economic decisions.

Describes recent scholarship on social choice and introduces new evidence about social preferences
Advances our understanding about quantifying social interactions and the effects of culture
Summarizes research on theoretical and applied economic analyses of social preferences