1 - Introduction

Summary

All but one of the chapters in this volume were written as public lectures for a general university audience. All examine the boundaries – at least parts of the boundaries – of the discipline of economics with two aims in mind. First, they seek to give noneconomists insights into the way economics works, the way economists think about human behavior, and the way their mode of thought differs from that prevailing in other disciplines. Second, they attempt to give economists fresh insights into the way they do their work, on the premise that looking at, and across, the boundaries of a subject – looking at what it is not – is often useful for understanding what it is. And to both groups these chapters are meant to give a sense of the often significant changes now taking place in these boundaries.

The lectures were given at Tulane University in 1985. The Murphy Institute of Political Economy and Policy Analysis was just then establishing an interdisciplinary undergraduate program in political economy, and I was invited for the spring term as the first Murphy Institute Visiting Professor. I was assigned three duties: to teach an undergraduate class on economics in the context of other disciplines, to organize an interdisciplinary faculty seminar, and to arrange for a series of public speakers. In all instances, the topics to be addressed were broadly the same.