Michael Perelman wrote: Because the choices studied by economists are a limited set of choices. For example, people choose as consumers, but workers have no choice about working conditions except to exit. But isn't that part of what needs to be assessed? What shapes choice, is there choice, what happens if we change the frame that determines what choices are available? And the difference with psychology is, I suppose, that economists treat psychology itself as a black box. In general, economists are not concerned with why people make the choices they make, only what choices they make and, in particular, how those choices change when the framework within which they make those choices change (typically just relative prices, but more properly the whole array of factors that impinge on individual behavior/choice, like how property rights are articulated, who has property rights, contract, torts, perceptions of status, etc.) Fred Carstensen