Reconsidering Identity Economics: Human Well-Being and Governance - Paperback

by Laszlo Garai (Author)

In 2003 I published in Hungarian a book entitled Identity Economics. Supposedly its approach to the topics of behavioural economics had been rather timely, from the fact that seven years later the Nobel prize winner George Akerlof (together with a co-author) published their book of the same title. The content of two monographs is quite different from each other but their logic is the same: the behavioural economics within the economic psychology must be complemented by an identity economics. The book is aimed toward both undergraduate and postgraduate students studying economics, sociology, politology or psychology in English-speaking universities in US, UK, Canada, Australia and other not perforce English-speaking countries. Their enrollment numbers are approximately 50-200 per university. My project would be suitable as the main reading, as long as my above mentioned Identity Economics is not yet translated from Hungarian into English (originally this monograph has been written as based on the texts I am actually proposing). The proposed book secondary market is represented by the staffs of the universities and academic research institutes. As far as I know the only title to be mentioned is the George Akerlof's and Rachel Kranton's Identity Economics: How Our Identities Shape Our Work, Wages, and Well-Being (Princeton University Press, 2010). However, it is not competing proposed monograph but the two are complementing each other (see the long paragraph comparing the two theories in the entry Identity Economics' of the Wikipedia)

Back Jacket

This book presents an unorthodox identity economics that approaches social identity through a non-classical psychology. Garai applies the modern physics concept of wave-particle duality to economic psychology, finding a corresponding duality in object-oriented activity and historically generated social identity. These two factors interconnect to create a double-storied structure of social identity and its behavioral manifestations. The book then presents a calculation device for mediating between behavioral and identity economics. Garai then applies all these factors to two socioeconomic systems developed during the second modernization: Bolshevik-type "socialism" and post-Bolshevik "capitalism." In this context, he examines the Eastern Bloc nomenklatura as a duality of bureaucratic and patron-client organization ("state and party") and the establishment of both today's material capitalism and its other half: human capital economics.
"Laszlo Garai's Reconsidering Identity Economics gives a new theory that intertwines people's psychology and their economics: their psychology (and especially their identities) is the result of their economic environment; their economic environment is the result of their psychology. Garai illustrates this new view of economics and psychology with applications that are drawn from his lifelong experience and that will fascinate all readers."--George Akerlof, Nobel Laureate in Economics, 2001

Author Biography

Laszlo Garai was the Founder and Head of the Departments of Economic Psychology at the University of Szeged, Hungary, and Nice University, France. He has also taught at Moscow State University, Russia, and branches of California State University at Bakersfield and San Bernardino, USA. He is the author of 21 monographs in Hungarian and Russian on economic, social, and theoretical psychology.