Scholarly Comments on Academic Economics

Notes of an Atheist on Economics and Religion

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Abstract

Mainstream economics is constrained by methodological individualism, which ignores many aspects of human existence and interaction. Methodological individualism itself propagates certain attitudes and outlooks that can become self-fulfilling by channelling human behaviour into the simplistic straitjacket of self-interest. A sense of ethics and therefore of spirituality is necessary to understand the complexities of human and social behaviour as well as to ground economic policy advice in a fundamental morality.