Who are the
economic men and women, and who the altruists?
Personal capital, social capital, human development, and the different economic men
The new concept of personal capital can be used to gain further insight into the different economic men and how they contribute to the whole of economics.
There is real virtue in recognizing the power of the incentives created by the social institutions of constitutionally constrained government, private property, and market exchange to lead
economic men, clods that they may be, to generate social outcomes far better than the most virtuous people could generate without those institutions.
It is that the humans that get addicted or avoid addictions are much more than simply rational or irrational
economic men.
If two
economic men play this game, there will be a unique subgame perfect equilibrium: the proposer offers the minimum possible positive sum of money to the respondent, and the respondent accepts, something being preferable to nothing.
His findings lead him to conclude, inter alia, that medieval English lords were rational
economic men and that King William's taxation was not "arbitrary" and depended on ability to pay - "subject to the political constraint of placating his powerful barons" [p.
