This edited collection looks at the emerging relationship between politics and economics. The analysis of power relations - traditionally the focus of political science - is becoming increasingly important to economists in order to understand concepts such as the 'contested nature' of market exchanges. These papers examine power relations in the firm and the market place and offer an economic perspective of political relations. The book is divided into three sections: * politics and power in economic organizations * the economic analysis of political organizations * politics, economics and social change The final section considers how a combination of economic and political tools can be used effectively to analyse social change.

Originally published in 1986, Bowles and Gintis present a critique of contemporary Marxian and liberal political theory. They show that 'capitalism' and 'democracy' - although widely held jointly to characterize Western society - are sharply contrasting systems regulating both the process of human developement and the historical evolution of whole societies. They examine in detail the relationship between political theory and economics, and explore the multifaceted character of power in modern societies.

Originally published in 1986, Bowles and Gintis present a critique of contemporary Marxian and liberal political theory. They show that 'capitalism' and 'democracy' - although widely held jointly to characterize Western society - are sharply contrasting systems regulating both the process of human developement and the historical evolution of whole societies. They examine in detail the relationship between political theory and economics, and explore the multifaceted character of power in modern societies.

This edited collection looks at the emerging relationship between politics and economics. The analysis of power relations - traditionally the focus of political science - is becoming increasingly important to economists in order to understand concepts such as the 'contested nature' of market exchanges. These papers examine power relations in the firm and the market place and offer an economic perspective of political relations. The book is divided into three sections:
* politics and power in economic organizations
* the economic analysis of political organizations
* politics, economics and social change
The final section considers how a combination of economic and political tools can be used effectively to analyse social change.

This critique of Reaganomics attempts to provide alternatives to both the supply experiments of the 1980s and neoliberal strategies of austerity. It presents arguments for economic democracy with a worker-oriented blueprint for improving productivity, growth, employment and economic justice.

This critique of Reaganomics attempts to provide alternatives to both the supply experiments of the 1980s and neoliberal strategies of austerity. It presents arguments for economic democracy with a worker-oriented blueprint for improving productivity, growth, employment and economic justice.

These two volumes collect some of the principal articles that have contributed to the renewal and development of radical political economy during the past generation. Radical Political Economy draws upon Marxian, institutional and Keynesian perspectives to construct a new and comprehensive analysis of modern capitalism, seeking to integrate the horizontal (competition), vertical (command), and time (change) dimensions of economic and other social relations.

David Gordon was a pioneer in the burgeoning field of institutional growth economics, introducing the concept of a 'social structure of accumulation', and richly illustrating its usefulness with both econometric and historical studies. Gordon also helped to develop the theory of segmented labor markets and contributed to the econometric and historical analysis of their evolution. This authoritative collection of his most influential works - selected and introduced by his two closest collaborators - embraces the full range of his lifelong scholarly endeavor to deploy modern economic reasoning in the cause of social justice. The work opens with an introduction and overview of David Gordon's career and published work. This is followed by his major essays on a great variety of topics, including the economics of crime, urban history, wage stagnation in the US economy, the organization of work, the 'top-heavy' modern corporation, the social and institutional determinants of productivity growth and the globalization of economic life, as well as labor market segmentation and the social structure of accumulation. Gordon's synthesis of questions of neo-Marxian and more conventional provenance, and his integration of historical and econometric methods in providing answers, makes Economics and Social Justice a unique and intellectually rewarding analysis of contemporary capitalism.

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments? Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity, and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of human nature, or are they modulated by economic, social, and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social (non-selfish) preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. In this study, the same experiments carried out with university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic, and cultural conditions. The results show that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. The results also trace the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life. The book includes a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool, and to its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The editors also summarize the results of the fifteen case studies in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project.

"Sam Bowles reminds the student from the first page to the last that microeconomic theory is an attempt to understand economic institutions in order to inspire us to improve the world. This book may be a turning point in bringing economics back to its real political economic roots."--Ariel Rubinstein, Tel Aviv University and Princeton University

"The standard neoclassical competitive model of economic behavior has been significantly extended in the last fifty years by emphasis on interaction among small groups (game theory), on extended models of human motivation based in part on human evolution, and on divergent information bases of participants. A rich but scattered literature has now received a brilliant synthesis and development in Samuel Bowles's new book. "Microeconomics" will be an indispensable part of future teaching in microeconomics at the graduate or advanced undergraduate levels, as well as an excellent source of information for the practicing economist."--Kenneth J. Arrow

"Homo economicus is dead, but whose Homo behavioralis will replace him? For those who care, this sustained and honest attempt to explore the implications for economic theory of one of the leading candidates is essential reading."--Ken Binmore, University College London

"An important and highly original book that shows how an evolutionary version of microeconomics can be brought to bear on central questions of economic growth and organization."--Peyton Young, Johns Hopkins University

"This is one of the most engaging books of its kind that has been written, intellectually challenging and a pleasure to read. It presents an innovative and unconventional perspective on microeconomics and, as such, is a book that many will want to teach from--I will."--Kaushik Basu, Cornell University

"Bowles does a masterful job of expanding the boundaries of received microeconomic theory by drawing upon cutting edge ideas from behavioral and experimental economics, evolutionary game theory, and the new institutional economics. I don't know of anyone who has woven such a wide range of literature into an equally coherent vision of post-Walrasian microeconomic theory."--Gregory Dow, Simon Fraser University

"This seminal work . . . establishes a persuasive new paradigm."--"Contemporary Sociology"

No book since "Schooling in Capitalist America" has taken on the systemic forces hard at work undermining our education system. This classic reprint is an invaluable resource for radical educators.

Samuel Bowles is research professor and director of the behavioral sciences program at the Santa Fe Institute, and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts.

Herbert Gintis is an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute and emeritus professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts.

Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good? Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin.

In "A Cooperative Species," Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers.

The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups. Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment.

Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition, "A Cooperative Species" provides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.

Economists warn that policies to level the economic playing field come with a hefty price tag. But this so-called 'equality-efficiency trade-off' has proven difficult to document. The data suggest, instead, that the extraordinary levels of economic inequality now experienced in many economies are detrimental to the economy. Moreover, recent economic experiments and other evidence confirm that most citizens are committed to fairness and are willing to sacrifice to help those less fortunate than themselves. Incorporating the latest results from behavioral economics and the new microeconomics of credit and labor markets, Bowles shows that escalating economic disparity is not the unavoidable price of progress. Rather it is policy choice - often a very costly one. Here drawing on his experience both as a policy advisor and an academic economist, he offers an alternative direction, a novel and optimistic account of a more just and better working economy.

The market does not spontaneously generate democratic or participatory economic institutions. This book asks whether a modern, efficient economy can be rendered democratically accountable and, if so, what strategic changes might be required to regulate the market-mediated interaction of economic agents. The contributors bring contemporary microeconomic theory to bear on a range of related issues, including the relationship between democratic firms and efficiency in market economies; incentives and the relative merits of various forms of internal democratic decision-making; and the effects of democratically accountable firms on innovation, saving, investment, and on the informational and disciplinary aspects of markets. Various approaches to the study of economic interaction (game theory, transactions' cost analysis, social choice theory, rent-seeking, etc.) are considered in an attempt to understand the relationship between power and efficiency in market economies.

What motives underlie the ways humans interact socially? Are these the same for all societies? Are these part of our nature, or influenced by our environments? Over the last decade, research in experimental economics has emphatically falsified the textbook representation of Homo economicus. Literally hundreds of experiments suggest that people care not only about their own material payoffs, but also about such things as fairness, equity and reciprocity. However, this research left fundamental questions unanswered: Are such social preferences stable components of human nature; or, are they modulated by economic, social and cultural environments? Until now, experimental research could not address this question because virtually all subjects had been university students, and while there are cultural differences among student populations throughout the world, these differences are small compared to the full range of human social and cultural environments. A vast amount of ethnographic and historical research suggests that people's motives are influenced by economic, social, and cultural environments, yet such methods can only yield circumstantial evidence about human motives. Combining ethnographic and experimental approaches to fill this gap, this book breaks new ground in reporting the results of a large cross-cultural study aimed at determining the sources of social (non-selfish) preferences that underlie the diversity of human sociality. The same experiments which provided evidence for social preferences among university students were performed in fifteen small-scale societies exhibiting a wide variety of social, economic and cultural conditions by experienced field researchers who had also done long-term ethnographic field work in these societies. The findings of these experiments demonstrated that no society in which experimental behaviour is consistent with the canonical model of self-interest. Indeed, results showed that the variation in behaviour is far greater than previously thought, and that the differences between societies in market integration and the importance of cooperation explain a substantial portion of this variation, which individual-level economic and demographic variables could not. Finally, the extent to which experimental play mirrors patterns of interaction found in everyday life is traced. The book starts with a succinct but substantive introduction to the use of game theory as an analytical tool and its use in the social sciences for the rigorous testing of hypotheses about fundamental aspects of social behaviour outside artificially constructed laboratories. The results of the fifteen case studies are summarized in a suggestive chapter about the scope of the project.