ISBN:
0444537139
Content:
This chapter provides an introduction to social economics, the study, with the methods of economics, of social phenomena in which aggregates affect individual choices. Such phenomena include social norms and conventions, cultural identities and stereotypes, peer and neighborhood effects, etcetera. The aim is to illustrate the intellectual vitality and richness of the recent literature in social economics by organizing its main contributions in a series of surveys. Social economics, for instance, does not lend itself naturally to a classic distinction along the theory/empirical work line, as concepts and measurements are often developed in tight connection with each other. Traditionally, economists have considered preferences as exogenous parameters for the study of individual choice. These self-imposed constraints have traditionally limited the scope of economic theory outside of purely economic phenomena, such as markets. A different approach to the study of the endogenous formation of preferences is to characterize those systems of preferences that are stable under some specific dynamic selection mechanism. Economists have traditionally studied externalities as well as strategic interactions, that is, environments in which the actions of some agents affect either the set of feasible actions available to other agents or their preferences.
In:
Handbook of social economics, Amsterdam : Elsevier/North-Holland, 2011, (2011), Seite xvii-xxi, 0444537139
In:
9780444537140
In:
0444537147
In:
9780444531872
In:
0444531874
In:
9780444537072
In:
0444537074
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9780444537133
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year:2011
In:
pages:xvii-xxi
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1016/B978-0-444-53187-2.00020-6
URL:
Volltext
(Deutschlandweit zugänglich)
