Sympathy for Homo Religiosus

Russell Roberts

Econ Journal Watch, 2014, vol. 11, issue 2, 227-232

Abstract: What might religion do to improve our understanding of economics and human behavior? Here I contrast the mainstream economics view of choice and behavior with the religious view. In the mainstream economics view, human beings are rational calculating maximizers of utility. In the religious view, human beings are fundamentally flawed, they are endowed with conflicting desires, and they are seekers of meaning and community. While these two views may lead to different implications for behavior, I focus on the implications for how they affect economists’ behavior in the policy arena. I suggest that developing sympathy for ‘homo religiosus’ could lead an economist to a policy outlook that is humbler, less expansive, and perhaps more productive.

Keywords: Adam Smith; homo economicus (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A12 A13 L26 Z12 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://econjwatch.org/File+download/823/RobertsMay2014.pdf?mimetype=pdf (application/pdf)
https://econjwatch.org/942 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ejw:journl:v:11:y:2014:i:2:p:227-232

Access Statistics for this article

Econ Journal Watch is currently edited by Daniel Klein

More articles in Econ Journal Watch from Econ Journal Watch Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jason Briggeman ().