I gather from Pat Gunning's comments that in his view economics should confine itself completely to marginal adjustments in behavior; that it will treat cultural, law, power, etc. as all "black boxes" that are external to the interests of economic as a scholarly field. Thus, it is of no scholarly interest to economists how actors are constrained in their behavior (choices) by these frameworks, nor how actors might seek to change the constraints (e.g., getting new laws or winning court cases--in the common law Anglo-American world). This is consistent with the thread that has suggested "real" economics does not concern itself with policy choices or even, perhaps, behavior in the real (empirical) world; those areas are left to mere political scientists. A Nobel Laureate in economics told me many years ago that the emphasis in economics on marginal analysis--which is what I take to be Pat's objective--makes economics as a field marginal. Because, he continued, it fails to address why people behave (choose) as they do to begin with. Pat, do I have it right? Fred Carstensen