Behavioral economics has played a fundamental role historically in innovation in economic institutions, even long before behavioral economics was recognized as a discipline. Examples from history, notably that of the invention of workers’ compensation, illustrate this point. Though scholarly discussion develops over decades, actual innovation tends to occur episodically, particularly at times of economic crisis. Fortunately, some of the major professional societies, the Verein fur Sozialpolitik, the American Economic Association and their successors, have managed to keep a broad discourse going, involving a variety of research methods including some that may be described today as behavioral economics, thereby maintaining an environment friendly to institutional innovation. Further, the broad expansion of behavioral economics that is going on today can be expected to yield even more such important institutional innovations.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Length: 24 pages Date of creation: Jan 2005 Date of revision: Publication status: Published in Southern Economic Journal (2005), 72(2): 269-283 Handle: RePEc:cwl:cwldpp:1499
Cited by: (explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)