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The article presents insights from Morris Altman, president of Victoria University of Wellington School of Economics and Finance in Wellington, New Zealand, regarding human's and consumer's right to choose. Altman says that choice behavior can be a metric for the good life in an environment where individuals have the freedom to choose and have effective voice, irrespective of income, gender, or religion. Altman explores other concepts including preferences, economic theory, and welfare maximization.

Contrary to the conventional view that unemployment insurance serves to directly increase the rate of unemployment as well as reducing an economy's competitiveness by increasing the market wage of labor, the argument presented in this paper is that this worldview critically depends on unrealistic behavioral assumptions. A more realistic modeling suggests that unemployment rates need not rise and competitiveness need not deteriorate with the introduction of or improvements in unemployment insurance, which can also induce increases in economic efficiency. These analytical predictions are consistent with the empirics of unemployment insurance. Unemployment insurance can therefore protect the unemployed without damaging the economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Daniel Kahneman and Vernon Smith were the joint recipients of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics. Kahneman's work challenges the assumption that individuals behave in a manner consistent with conventional economic wisdom. He maintains that individuals tend to be systematically error prone and possibly irrational. Smith, on the other hand, developed experiments and experimental environments to test hypotheses emanating from the conventional economic wisdom. Smith finds that, in spite of Kahneman's work, economic agents are rational and that economies are efficient. These differing views are discussed and placed in the context of the methodological and public policy debates in economics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is on the survival principle, as articulated by Milton Friedman, that dominates the methodology of the conventional wisdom either explicitly or implicitly. The survival principle is revised applying the behavioral approach to economics, which differs Fundamentally with Friedman's methodology. This discussion is contextualized by a comparison of the different approaches to the modeling of economic agents and the substantive implications of this for theory and public policy and thereby for economic welfare and economic justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a theoretical case to demonstrate how higher wages might improve productivity and force firms to become more efficient. Limits of the conventional imagination regarding the reason why individuals choose to work hard; Revisions on the margin of human agency and economic theory; Positive role of high wages in the real world; Details on the behavioral model of economic growth.

Examines the relationship between per-capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth and business cycle volatility for thirteen developed market economies within the 1870-1986 time frame and from the pre-Depression to the post-World War II era in the United States. Economic paradigm on the issue; Volatility and growth estimates.