Why New Economics Needs a New Invisible Hand

The New Invisible Hand suggests the existence of a middle path.

By David Sloan Wilson In olden days, the death of one Monarch and coronation of the next was sometimes announced with the words “The King is Dead! Long Live the King!” In this spirit, I’m […]

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How to Create Collective Intelligence

Markets, science, and humanity don’t automatically generate solutions.

David Sloan Wilson interview Geoff Mulgan Say the word “mind” and most people immediately think about the workings of an individual brain. The idea that something larger than an individual might have a mind seems […]

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The Radical Remaking of Economics

To place economics on a solid footing, we need to build its intellectual foundations

By David Sloan Wilson and Eric Beinhocker This year marks the 10th anniversary of Eric Beinhocker’s influential book The Origin of Wealth: The Radical Remaking of Economics and What it Means for Business and Society. […]

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Why Groups Fail (Hint: For the Same Reasons that Nations Fail)

To solve the problem of abuse by power-hungry leaders, the first step must be the adoption of a worldview that makes it obvious.

By David Sloan Wilson Some experiments are like a good play, compressing profound truths into compact form. That’s how I felt when I read a 2010 article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology […]

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The Invisible Hand is Dead!

It’s time to rethink the foundational economic metaphor

By David Sloan Wilson In olden days, the death of a king and accession of his successor was announced by the proclamation “The King is Dead! Long Live the King!” I’m here to announce the […]

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Fighting Wall Street Predators with Game Theory

Punishing the financial defectors

By David Sloan Wilson The newest Wall Street bestseller by Michael Lewis, Flash Boys, chronicles the unlikely emergence of fairness in the corrupt world of high-frequency trading (HFT). It’s a gripping and enlightening read for anyone […]

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The Woman Who Saved Economics from Disaster

Who is Elinor Ostrom?

Editor’s Note: In an effort to center New Economic Thinking in the discussion of the COVID-19 crisis, we’ve curated a list of Evonomics articles relevant to this moment—including this one. Check out the full list here. […]

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Let’s Take Objectivism Back from Ayn Rand

A creed that is just like religious fundamentalism

By David Sloan Wilson In George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel 1984, a totalitarian state has created a language called Newspeak designed to limit freedom of thought, often by inverting customary meanings. How ironic that Ayn […]

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Love Hayek, Love Darwin

It’s time to update the libertarian hero

By David Sloan Wilson In my last essay on Hayek I distinguished between the flesh and blood man and the ideological monster that was created in the 1940s and continues to lumber around uttering his […]

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