Meaningful Economics: Making the Science of Prosperity More Human

Oxford University Press, December 2024

Economics has a problem—the discipline cannot distinguish the causes of human action from the consequences of human action. Economists deal with matters of fact, not with feelings and morals. They model representations of optimal agents, not flesh-and-blood human beings in ordinary life. By assuming that incentives and self-interest are sufficient to explain economic activity, economic science proceeds as if the human mind does not matter. But the origins of our actions—ideas—do indeed matter. They make us human.

In Meaningful Economics, Bart Wilson challenges economics to directly engage human beings as we really are, not as economists ideally assume. Wilson argues that economic science is as much about purposes and human values as it is about incentives. Moreover, he shows how the outcomes of our decisions—their costs and benefits—and the origins of our decisions—our motives and goals—can be understood in an integrated way.

Over the course of the book, Wilson develops a framework that connects the origins of human action to the outcomes of human action, explaining human conduct with causes and effects. He then demonstrates how three basic principles of economics—trade, specialization, and property—require meaning, values, and purpose. With a fresh perspective and a novel theoretical framework that bridges economics and ethics, Meaningful Economics explains the roots of human conduct and its economic effects by grounding a science of economics in the moral sentiments that prompt human beings to act.

Endorsements

“The word ‘brilliant’ comes to mind. But Wilson’s book is not merely clever, elegant, learned, and open-handed, though it is. It's profound, in the exact sense of getting down to the fundament, rediscovering the base for economics. The base is the tripod of human mind, ideas, and language, what Adam Smith emphasized but his followers forgot. Read the book and learn the fundamentals as you never really have.”
— Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Professor Emerita of Economics, History, English, and Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago

“Economists and moral philosophers study how communities manage literal and commercial traffic. They see their respective fields as self-contained, but looming over both is a lost insight that the question of justice is not how to slice the pie but how to respect bakers. That question really matters, but our artificial departmental silos are no longer right for studying it. Wilson points us toward what moral science could have been and may yet be.”
— David Schmidtz, Presidential Chair of Moral Science, West Virginia University’s Chambers College of Business and Economics

“Meaningful Economics is a truly original and important contribution. Most economic analysis is about what optimal decision makers might do. Bart Wilson’s book is about economic elements in the virtues and vices of human conduct. Once started it's hard to set aside.”
— Vernon L. Smith, 2002 Nobel Laureate in Economics

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