This essay analyzes what Gary S. Becker and Richard A. Posner have written for various media (either in print or online) that are not strictly aimed at academic audiences. We provide an historical account of how they became interested in such activities, from their first attempts, made...

This article contextualizes the writing, reception, and impact of Gary Becker’s first book, The Economics of Discrimination, in order to deepen our understanding of the relationships between economics and the other social sciences. First, we study the social scientific work on race relations...

This article investigates the expansion of the scope of economics in the 1960s. We show that the public policy problems raised by the issue of poverty reinforced the expansion, as economists became progressively involved in the social issues of the day. Until the early 1960s, poverty was a...

This paper aims to study the ‘economics made fun’ literature with regard to its main purpose: popularizing economics. We shed an historical light on such literature by showing that its main strategy for introducing economics to non-specialists had already been tried in the 1970s in what were...

This article contextualizes the writing, reception, and impact of Gary Becker’s first book, The Economics of Discrimination, in order to deepen our understanding of the relationships between economics and the other social sciences. First, we study the social scientific work on race relations...

Cet article se propose de rapprocher les theories de l'evolution culturelle de Hayek et de Darwin. L'argumentation est menee a partir de l'etude de La descendance de l'homme ouvrage publie en 1871 et dans lequel Darwin present sa theorie de l'evolution culturelle.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the way economists interested in social and economic evolution cite, mention or refer to Darwin. We focus on the attitude of economists towards Darwin's theory of social evolution – an issue he considered as central to his theory. We show that...

Cet article etudie les consequences d'un altruisme non reciproque et demontre que l'exploitation du samaritain par le beneficiaire depend du niveau d'altruisme et non du montant des transferts. Un modele caracterise les conditions dans lesquelles un dilemme du prisonnier se transforme en un...

Our purpose is to investigate the normative content of democratic choices,in a spontaneous society. Conditions of rightness are obtained. They shap e a s stem of natural law as a local public good. The corresponding socialorganization is that of nearness societies, in the geographical space as...