Abstract: 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...

There is an extensive critical literature analyzing the libertarian paternalism (LP) of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. This paper is critical as well, but does so from a different perspective than most of the existing research. Thaler and Sunstein characterize LP by at least two key features:...

The paper argues that much of the theoretical work on consumer choice theory during the first third of the twentieth century actually addressed some of the same issues discussed in contemporary behavioral economics. This is not generally recognized because the discussion was tied up with the...

Abstract: This paper examines criticisms of libertarian paternalism, focusing in particular on so-called knowledge problems: the set of problems associated with the question of whether a choice architect would, or even could, have sufficient information to implement a successful libertarian...

Recent histories of 20th century economics have emphasized the transformation of demand theory that occurred during the period between early neoclassicism and Arrow-Debreu. This paper examines three contributions to this recent literature - Amadae (2003), Davis (2003), and Giocoli (2003) - and...

This paper examines elements of the complex place/role/influence of psychology in the history of consumer choice theory. The paper reviews, and then challenges, the standard narrative that psychology was "in" consumer choice theory early in the neoclassical revolution, then strictly "out" during...