There is a persistent aversion towards methodological discourse by most mainstream economists. Frank Hahn (1992) exemplified this attitude and provoked a number of reactions concerning the role and the reasons for methodological aversion. After offering a categorization of the main explanations...

The starting point of this paper is the idea that trade unions and individual workers pay attention to wage settlements in similar sectors of the economy. The foundations of this concept can be found in other social sciences and also in the literature of psychological economics. However, it has...

The pre-war approaches to trade unions were mainly based on the theoretical and methodological viewpoints of early institutional economics. Trade unions were conceived of as politico-economic organizations whose members were motivated by relative comparisons and also were concerned with issues...

Although most of the marginalist economists’ methodology was influenced by 19th century classical physics, the work of second generation marginalist Francis Ysidro Edgeworth represents the highest point of classical physics influence to the development of mainstream economic methodology....

Abraham Maslow’s theory of hierarchical needs has been employed by a large variety of conceptual frameworks. The theory can also offer additional insights to the research field which investigates the relationship between income and reported happiness levels. The incorporation of needs...

One of the main economic outcomes of the recent great recession was the decrease of labour earnings in many countries. The relevant literature indicates that earnings and other socioeconomic predictors can influence psychological well-being. The same holds true for job satisfaction. This chapter...

Consumer theory is considered to be the hard core of the neoclassical canon. The present work traces the various historical stages which led to the acceptance of the theory, and attempts to offer some possible explanations for its eventual establishment. The paper starts with a brief historical...

The vast majority of pre-Classical and of many Classical economists thought that it was natural to incorporate value judgments and norms in their economic reasoning. However, there was a gradual dominance of the idea of a neutral or value-free economic science which gained momentum with the...

In the last few decades the influence on economics of the ideas of T. Kuhn and I. Lakatos was considerable. The increasing use of terms like “paradigms” and “scientific research programmes” in almost every field of economics, is indicative of the influence of these two philosophers....

The main starting point of this paper is the idea that trade unions do not only care about real wage level but also about a reference or aspiration wage level. After citing a number of empirical works, the paper argues that the attainment of the reference wage is a priority for the union. This...