Dear colleagues,

I hope this message finds you well. 

I am writing regarding the next session of my research seminar, “Description, Evaluation and Prescription in Economics and Philosophy” at the Collège International de Philosophie (Université Paris Lumières), organized with the support of the Walras-Pareto Center (Université de Lausanne) and the Université Paris Cité.

The next session will take place on Friday, April 14. I will have the pleasure of welcoming Wade Hands, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Puget Sound, who will give a talk entitled “Frank Knight and Behavioral Economics”.

Here is the Abstract of his talk:

“Frank Knight was an enigmatic thinker: not only about economics, but also about individual and social behavior more generally, ethics, political philosophy, epistemology, and a number of other subjects. However, his views on some topics often created tensions with his views on other topics. This paper will examine two of these Knightian tensions: i) his views on the relationship between rational economic behavior (homo economicus) and the actual behavior of individual humans, and ii) his views on the relationship between rational economic behavior and normative economics (welfare economics and microeconomic policy). It will be argued that Knight anticipated many of the anomalies identified by behavioral economics and yet did so while defending traditional homo economicus to some degree. Understanding the similarities and differences between Knight’s views on economic behavior and policy and those associated with contemporary behavioral economics opens the door to an examination of how he might have thought about – or how his ideas might help us think about – some hotly debated contemporary topics like the connection between idealized homo economicus-based models and the anomalies of behavioral economics, as well as certain behavioral-economics inspired policies like behavioral paternalism.”

Wade has written a large number of remarkable books and papers on various topics in the history, philosophy, and methodology of economics, such as Reflection Without Rules (2001, Cambridge University Press), which received the History of Economics Society’s Joseph J. Spengler Book Prize in 2004, “The Individual and the Market: Paul Samuelson on (Homothetic) Santa Claus Economics” (2016, the EJHET), which received the 2017 Best Article Award from the European Society for the History of Economic Thought, and “Hypothetical Pattern Explanations in Economic Science: Hayek’s Explanation of the Principle and Pattern Prediction Meets Contemporary Philosophy of Science” (2018, RHETM), which received RHETM’s Warren Samuels Prize for Interdisciplinary Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology.    

Wade’s talk, open to all without registration, will take place from 6 pm to 8 pm (Paris time) over Zoom. You can attend the seminar using this link: https://unil.zoom.us/j/95709013453

The discussant of his talk will be Rafaël Lazega (Université de Lausanne), who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Frank Knight under the supervision of Steven Medema and Harro Maas.

My very best wishes,

Sina Badiei