Economic Science Institute’s Professor Bart Wilson has published a book entitled, Meaningful Economics.

Meaningful Economics Cover

In Meaningful Economics, Bart Wilson challenges economics to directly engage human beings as we really are, not as economists ideally assume.  Wilson argues that economic science is as much about purposes and human values as it is about incentives. Moreover, he develops a framework to illustrate how the outcomes of our decisions—their costs and benefits—and the origins of our decisions—our motives and goals—can be understood in an integrated way. He then demonstrates how three basic principles of economics—trade, specialization, and property—require meaning, values, and purpose. With a fresh perspective and a novel theoretical framework that bridges economics and ethics, Meaningful Economics explains the roots of human conduct and its economic effects by grounding a science of economics in the moral sentiments that prompt human beings to act.

Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human features:

Bart Wilson's headshot

  • Presents a significant new interpretation of economic science as founded on meaning, values, and purpose
  • Draws on evolutionary biology, linguistics, and philosophy to build a new study of economics
  • Argues that economics is as much about purposes and human values as it is about cost-benefit analysis
  • Reframes economic science as a question of “why?” and not merely “how?” or “how much?”

“The word ‘brilliant’ comes to mind. But Wilson’s book is not merely clever, elegant, learned, and open-handed, though it is. It’s profound, in the exact sense of getting down to the fundament, rediscovering the base for economics. The base is the tripod of human mind, ideas, and language, what Adam Smith emphasized but his followers forgot. Read the book and learn the fundamentals as you never really have.”

–Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Professor Emerita of Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago

Bart J. Wilson is the Donald P. Kennedy Endowed Chair in Economics and Law at Chapman University. He is a founding member of the Economic Science Institute and founding member and Director of the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy.