Samuel Bowles: The Moral Economy

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Samuel Bowles, Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute, for a discussion of his intellectual odyssey and his most recent book The Moral Economy. Topics covered include the influence of parents, his encounters with Nehru and Martin Luther King, and his education. He addresses the necessary changes in the agenda of economics as it grapples with the limits of incentives and the opportunities for bringing in a focus on community and altruism in order to confront global problems. He also offers advice to students entering the discipline of economics. Finally, he discusses his involvement in an online global effort to reform the economics curriculum through the creation of an online textbook, curriculum, and a community of economists from around the globe focusing on the economics of inequality, innovation, environmental sustainability and more. https://www.core-econ.org