Today I would suggest you to read JM Colomer blog. He has written an excellent post on him and its impact on economic science. Selected statements:
Marginalist microeconomics held that we could understand collective outcomes by assuming that they derive from free interactions among homines economici.
A first big counter-revolution was the reintroduction of institutions in the basic analysis, especially since the 1980 and 1990s (including by Nobel laureates related to the social choice and public choice schools such as Kenneth Arrow, James Buchanan, Ronald Coase, Douglass North, Amartya Sen, Thomas Schelling, Leonid Hurwicz, Roger Myerson, political scientist Elinor Ostrom, Oliver Williamson, and others).
The second is the reintroduction of realistic observations about people’s motivations and behavior, including emotions. This has been based on psychology, on the background of huge progress in neuroscience (while pioneers include political scientist Herbert Simon and psychologist Daniel Kahneman). That Richard Thaler professes at the University of Chicago, once the temple of the neoclassical school, shows the depth of the change.
Now we know again that the three pillars of social analysis are, together with people’s calculated self-interested choices, emotions and institutions, as Hume and Smith masterfully had already established.And this is the return to the roots of economics with a new toolkit.
Parov Stelar
