Individuals and Identity in Economics

John B. Davis is Professor and Chair of History and Philosophy of Economics at the University of Amsterdam; Professor of Economics at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; and Fellow at the Tinbergen Institute, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. He is the author of Keynes's Philosophical Development (Cambridge University Press, 1994) and The Theory of the Individual in Economics (2003), which was a co-winner of the 2004 Myrdal Prize from the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. He is a co-editor with Wade Hands and Uskali Mäki of The Handbook of Economic Methodology (1998) and a co-editor with Warren Samuels and Jeff Biddle of The Blackwell Companion to the History of Economic Thought (2003). Professor Davis has published in journals such as the Cambridge Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, the Review of Political Economy, the History of Political Economy and the Journal of Economic Methodology. Professor Davis is a past President of the History of Economics Society, a past Chair of the International Network for Economic Method and past President of the Association for Social Economics. He is a past editor of the Review of Social Economy and is currently co-editor with Wade Hands of the Journal of Economic Methodology.

'This book provides a breathtaking survey of the recent invasion of economic psychology into the very heartland of economics, concerned as it is - and to some extent always has been - with the conception of individuals and their identity in economic life. The author has written before on individuality in economics but never as comprehensively and sure-footedly as in this new book.' Mark Blaug, University of London and University of Buckingham

• 1. Introduction: the individual in economics; Part I. Atomism Revised: 2. Psychology's challenge to economics: rationality and the individual; 3. Multiple selves and self-control: contextualizing individuality; 4. Social identity and social preferences in the utility function; Part II. Interaction: 5. The individual in game theory: from fixed points to experiments; 6. Multiple selves in interaction: teams and neuroscience; 7. Evolutionary conceptions of the individual: identity through change; Part III. Socially Embedded Individuals: 8. Evolution and capabilities: human heterogeneity; 9. The identity of individuals and the economics of identity; 10. Economic policy, democracy, and justice.