About

We are economists and thinkers from a range of disciplines who challenge conventional wisdom and advance ideas to better serve society.

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We develop research that challenges economic orthodoxy and serves society.

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Commentary, analysis, interviews, and research summaries by INET-affiliated writers.

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Interviews, presentations and video series with provocative economic thinkers, public figures and students.

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Economics and Beyond with Rob Johnson, a podcast featuring interviews with some of the world’s most important thinkers, artists, and activists about the pressing issues of our time. The podcast is also available on all major podcasting platforms, such as Apple, Spotify, Google, and Podbean.

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Video series and courses for students and educators interested in exploring new economic thinking.

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Through the Young Scholars Initiative (YSI), INET provides support to students, young professionals, or others who embrace new and critical ways of thinking about the economy. YSI fosters conversation among those who wish to engage with new economic thinking and connects young scholars to the Institute’s vast network of economists.

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Samuel Bowles

Samuel Bowles (PhD, Economics, Harvard University) is Research Professor at the Santa Fe Institute where he heads the Behavioral Sciences Program. He taught economics at Harvard from 1965 to 1973 and since then at the University of Massachusetts, where he is now emeritus professor and at the University of Siena from 2002 to 2010.

His recent scholarly papers have appeared in Science, Nature, American Economic Review, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Behavioral and Brain Science, and Philosophy and Public Affairs. Recent books include The Moral Economy: Good laws are no substitute for good citizens, A Cooperative Species: Human reciprocity and its evolution (with Herbert Gintis), The new economics of inequality and redistribution, and Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions and Evolution). He is currently working on Equality’s Fate: The origins and future of economic disparity and political hierarchy.

He has also advised the governments of Cuba, South Africa and Greece, to Robert F. Kennedy and Jesse Jackson, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, and to South African President Nelson Mandela.

By this expert

Samuel Bowles Remembers Martin Luther King

Article By Samuel Bowles | Apr 5, 2018

The economist reflects back on the racial justice leader who showed him the limits of his academic training.

Featuring this expert

General Equilibrium Theory: Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing?

Article By Raphaële Chappe | Aug 16, 2016

Does general equilibrium theory sufficiently enhance our understanding of the economic process to make the entire exercise worthwhile, if we consider that other forms of thinking may have been ‘crowded out’ as a result of its being the ‘dominant discourse’? What, in the end, have we really learned from it?

The Fairness of Markets

Article By Raphaële Chappe and Sanjay Reddy | Sep 28, 2015

A student of microeconomics learns that any desirable efficient market allocation can be sustained by a competitive equilibrium (the Second Theorem of Welfare Economics), given appropriate lump-sum wealth redistributions. This is typically understood as a means to correct unfair market outcomes. What are the real world implications of the second theorem? How well does it address distributional concerns?

The Death of ‘Homo Economicus’

Video Featuring Samuel Bowles | Jun 18, 2015

Good incentives are no substitute for good citizens.