Book contents
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2010
Summary
Rules alone can unite an extended order. … Neither all ends pursued, nor all means used, are known or need be known to anybody, in order for them to be taken account of within a spontaneous order. Such an order forms of itself. …
Hayek (1988, pp. 19–20)… the realist … turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp and busies himself with a fragment.
Gibran (1918; 2002, p. 55)Experimental economics is good at measurement, testing, and discovery in studying the microeconomics of human behavior governed by the informal norms of social exchange and the more explicit rules of exchange in institutions. It has not been good at integration and interpretation within the broader context of human social and economic development. The learning from a half-century of experimental discovery will be particularly significant if we can find a way to leverage that learning into a broader understanding of the human career; otherwise, the rewards from the range of our research will be too narrowly drawn, fragmented, and of passing interest, as scholars move on to the intricate details of whatever is next. This book is an outgrowth of my struggle to obtain a larger vision of meaning in social and market economic behavior, and to communicate whatever value that process might contribute to a larger community. I know that others have similar concerns because we have shared them from time to time in passing and in depth. The picture I see is still blurred.
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- Rationality in EconomicsConstructivist and Ecological Forms, pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007