In a complex and uncertain world, humans and animals make decisions under the constraints of limited knowledge, resources, and time. Yet models of rational decision making in economics, cognitive science, biology, and other fields largely ignore these real constraints and instead assume agents with perfect information and unlimited time. About forty years ago, Herbert Simon challenged this view with his notion of "bounded rationality." Today, bounded rationality has become a fashionable term used for disparate views of reasoning. This book promotes bounded rationality as the key to understanding how real people make decisions. Using the concept of an "adaptive toolbox," a repertoire of fast and frugal rules for decision making under uncertainty, it attempts to impose more order and coherence on the idea of bounded rationality. The contributors view bounded rationality neither as optimization under constraints nor as the study of people's reasoning fallacies. The strategies in the adaptive toolbox dispense with optimization and, for the most part, with calculations of probabilities and utilities. The book extends the concept of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to emotions; it analyzes social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools as rational strategies; and it shows how smart heuristics can exploit the structure of environments.

This book is an expanded and revised edition of the author's critically acclaimed volume Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences. In twenty-six succinct chapters, Jon Elster provides an account of the nature of explanation in the social sciences. He offers an overview of key explanatory mechanisms in the social sciences, relying on hundreds of examples and drawing on a large variety of sources-psychology, behavioral economics, biology, political science, historical writings, philosophy and fiction. Written in accessible and jargon-free language, Elster aims at accuracy and clarity while eschewing formal models.

This book is intended as an introductory survey of the philosophy of the social sciences. It is essentially a work of exposition that offers a tool box of mechanisms--nuts and bolts, cogs and wheels--that can be used to explain complex social phenomena. Within a brief compass, Jon Elster covers a vast range of topics. His point of departure is the conflict we all face between our desires and our opportunities. How can rational choice theory help us understand our motivation and behavior? More significantly, what happens when the theory breaks down but we still cleave to a belief in the power of the rational? Elster describes the fascinating range of forms of irrationality--wishful thinking, the phenomenon of sour grapes, discounting the future in non-cooperative behavior. He shows how these issues bear directly on our lives in such concrete situations as wage bargaining, economic cartels, political strikes, voting in elections, and court decisions involving child custody.

本书是卡尔·波普尔的代表作之一，也是一部有较大影响的社会科学名著。全书以清晰的思路和严密的逻辑对所谓的历史决定论——认为历史预测是社会科学的主要目的，并且假定可以通过发现隐藏在历史演变下面的规律来达到这个目的——进行了介绍和批驳。作者的结论是：我们不可能预测历史的未来进程，历史决定论的基本目的是错误的，历史决定论是不能成立的。

内容简介
《论经济学和经济学家》在学科领域方面，不仅着眼于各传统经济学科的新成果，更注重经济前沿学科、边缘学科和综合学科的新成就；在选题的采择上，广泛联系海内外学者，努力开据学术功力深厚、思想新颖独到、作品水平拔尖的“高、新、尖”著作。“文库”力求达到中国经济学界当前的最高水平。
媒体推荐
你是否正在寻找一本由一位擅长写作并对自由市场与政府管制有深刻洞察的经济学家所写的书？你是否希望最好还能对他分析事物的巧妙方法不时会心一笑？那么，罗纳德·H.科斯的《论经济学和经济学家》正是你的所求……这位诺贝尔奖桂冠获得者切中知识的肯綮，一页一页地加以机敏剖析。
——David R.Henderson，Reason
科斯证明了书面语言所具有的雄辩力，姑且不论经济学家，就是新闻记者，也很少有人能与之媲美。在那个经济学家似乎视其研究的质量取决于对门外汉来说理解起来有多难的时代，科斯却坚持清晰、简洁地表达他的思想，并常以微妙但深刻的方式挑战经济学的教条……《论经济学和经济学家》罗纳德·H_科斯的最高成就……如果你还不了解科斯的研究，那么，它就是精彩的讲解；如果你熟悉科斯的研究，那么，你将会从中进一步加深对科斯作为一个人及一位经济学家的认识。
——Aaron Steelman.Michigan Review
这些文章通过探究古典和新古典经济学理论的主要代表人物的研究和生活，从而为我们提供了一种看待经济学的宽广视角。
——Journal of Economic Literature
后记
本书的译校和统稿由郑州航空工业管理学院的罗君丽和浙江财经学院的茹玉骢通力合作完成。
我们首先要感谢大洋彼岸的罗纳德·H.科斯教授，他百岁高龄仍为我们写来了简短精炼的中文版前言，他对经济学的执著情怀和对中国改革的高度关注，时刻鞭策我们全力做好本书的每一个细节；我们要感谢导师浙江大学经济学院的金祥荣教授，他审订译稿并撰写了中译本序；我们要感谢美国亚利桑那州立大学的王宁教授、天则经济研究所的盛洪教授、浙江大学的史晋川教授，他们都分别对这项工作给予了很多指导性建议和帮助；我们还要感谢浙江大学外国语言文化与国际交流学院的徐雪英博士，她以自己的专业优势为我们提供了无私而热忱的帮助。我们最后要特别感谢格致出版社的何元龙先生、麻俊生先生及李娜女士，没有他们的信任、鼓励和支持，我们便不能以翻译的形式更深切地领会科斯思想之精髓。
文摘
现代经济学理论的另一个特征，是分析的日趋抽象化，似乎无需对真实经济体系进行详细了解，甚至在完全没有关于真实经济体系知识的情况下，也可以发展理论，这使经济体系的其他方面更易忽略。在最近出版的申，本特·霍姆斯特龙和让·梯若尔在《企业理论》这篇63页的论文结尾处这样总结道：“目前在这个领域，事实／理论的比率非常之低。”。萨姆·皮尔兹曼对该手册写了一篇尖锐评论，指出其中有多少论述是没有任何经验基础的理论。
经济学家所研究的是一个存在于他们心目中的而不是现实中的经济体系，企业和市场似乎都有名无实。我曾把这种现象称之为“黑板经济学”。主流经济学理论中的企业曾经常被描述为一个“黑箱”，现在仍然如此。但是，现代经济体系中大多数资源的使用都是发生在企业内部，如何利用这些资源直接取决于行政决策而非市场运行，从而，经济体系的效率很大程度上取决于组织（尤其是现代公司）如何经营其业务。如果考虑到上述事实，经济学的研究现状就显得格外反常。如果考虑到经济学家的兴趣是定价系统，而他们竟在研究中忽略市场——或更专业地讲，是忽略了决定交易过程的制度安排，这就更让人奇怪。因为这些制度安排在很大程度上决定了生产什么，所以，我们现有的不包含这些制度安排的主流经济学理论就是很不完善的理论。

In 1937, Ronald H. Coase published "The Nature of the Firm," a classic paper that raised fundamental questions about the concept of the firm in economic theory. Coase proposed that the comparative costs of organizing transactions through markets rather than within firms are the primary determinants of the size and scope of firms. Coase won the 1991 Nobel Prize in Economics for this work. This volume derives from a conference held in 1987 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Coase's classic article. The first chapter affords an overview of the volume. It is followed by a republication of the 1937 article, and by the three lectures Coase presented at the conference. These lectures provide a lively and informative history of the origins and development of his thought. Subsequent chapters explore a wide-range of theoretical and empirical issues that have arisen in the transaction cost economic tradition. They illustrate the power of the transaction cost approach to enhance understanding not only of business firms, but of problems of economic organization generally. In addition to Coase's work, contributors include Sherwin Rosen, Paul Joskow, Oliver Hart, Harold Demsetz, Scott Masten, Benjamin Klein, as well as the volume's editors, Oliver E. Williamson, and Sidney G. Winter. The Nature of the Firm includes Coase's acceptance speech for his Nobel Prize in Economics.

在这部关于经济史和社会理论的经典著作中，卡尔·波兰尼分析了工业革命的大转型带来的经济和社会的巨大变化。他的分析不仅阐述了自我调适的自由市场的缺陷，而且阐述了资本主义市场带来的可怕的社会后果。新的序言和导言揭示了在全球化和自由贸易时代波兰尼的精辟分析所具有的新的价值。
当第二次世界大战接近尾声的时候，两本关于政治经济学的著作出版了。一本是哈耶克的《通向奴役之路》，它成为20世纪最后四分之一世纪里的自由市场革命的推动性力量。另一本是卡尔·波兰尼的《大转型》，它值得人们好好阅读，它是这个世纪最重要、最具创造性的著作，就扩展和加深对市场社会的批评而言，这个时代没有其他书比《大转型》做得更多了。

Can the market fully manage the money and banking sector?
Jesús Huerta de Soto, professor of economics at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, has made history with this mammoth and exciting treatise that it has and can again, without inflation, without business cycles, and without the economic instability that has characterized the age of government control.
Such a book as this comes along only once every several generations: a complete comprehensive treatise on economic theory. It is sweeping, revolutionary, and devastating--not only the most extended elucidation of Austrian business cycle theory to ever appear in print but also a decisive vindication of the Misesian-Rothbardian perspective on money, banking, and the law.
Jörg Guido Hülsmann has said that this is the most significant work on money and banking to appear since 1912, when Mises's own book was published and changed the way all economists thought about the subject.
Its five main contributions:
a wholesale reconstruction of the legal framework for money and banking, from the ancient world to modern times,
an application of law-and-economics logic to banking that links microeconomic analysis to macroeconomic phenomena,
a comprehensive critique of fractional-reserve banking from the point of view of history, theory, and policy,
an application of the Austrian critique of socialism to central banking,
the most comprehensive look at banking enterprise from the point of view of market-based entrepreneurship.
Those are the main points but, in fact, this only scratches the surface. Indeed, it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this book. De Soto provides also a defense of the Austrian perspective on business cycles against every other theory, defends the 100% reserve perspective from the point of view of Roman and British law, takes on the most important objections to full reserve theory, and presents a full policy program for radical reform.
It was Hülsmann's review of the Spanish edition that inspired the translation that led to this Mises Institute edition in English. The result is astonishing: an 875-page masterpiece that utterly demolishes the case for fiat currency and central banking, and shows that these institutions have compromised economic stability and freedom, and, moreover, are intolerable in a free society.
De Soto has set new scholarly standards with this detailed discussion of monetary reform from an Austro-libertarian point of view. Huerta de Soto s solid elaboration of his arguments along these lines makes his treatise a model illustration of the Austrian approach to the study of the relationship between law and economics.
It could take a decade for the full implications of this book to be absorbed but this much is clear: all serious students of these subject matters will have to master this treatise.

本书详细讨论了选择导师、阅读与写作参加学术会议、陈述报告、处理与导师的关系、建立人际关系网络、论文答辩和职业生涯规划等主题，针对研究生各阶段给出了详尽的学术建议，有较强的实用性和操作性。

'A breath of fresh air - I wish someone had told me this beforehand' - PhD student, UK. 'If you are contemplating a PhD, buy the book and read it straight through to get the larger picture; then re-read each section in greater detail as you tackle each stage of your work. I did the basic research for my PhD in about twelve months, then spent two years writing up the results - and producing possibly too much. It succeeded, but I think I might have made a better job of it if I had read a book like this first. But they didn't exist in those days' - Mantex.This book looks at things the other books don't tell you about doing a PhD - what it's really like and how to come through it with a happy ending! It covers all the things you wish someone had told you before you started: what a PhD is really about, and how to do one well; the "unwritten rules" of research and of academic writing; what your supervisor actually means by terms like "good referencing" and "clean research question"; how to write like a skilled researcher; and, how academic careers really work. It is an ideal resource if someone you care about (including yourself!) is undergoing or considering a PhD. This book turns lost, clueless students back into people who know what they are doing, and who can enjoy life again.

新思想来源于何处?什么是社会智能?无知如何转变为悟性?为什么社会科学家们会盲目地采用无头脑的统计学仪式?这本重要著作对这些问题做出了精辟回答。它将理性作为适应性思维进行重新思考，这种思维重在理解头脑是如何应付其周围环境的，包括自然的和社会的。总之，本书收集的论文发展了这样的思想：人类思维——从科学创造到理解艾滋病病毒检测结果意味着什么——部分地“发生”于头脑外部。
在本书中，吉仁泽教授提出并详细说明了探讨理性心理学问题的一项大胆而新颖的研究方案。生态理性、有限理性、社会理性等颇具创意的概念为研究人类理性提供了一种全新的理论框架。其独到的见解和论述将关于人类思维、社会智能、创造性及决策制定等问题的研究从一个虚无缥缈的梦幻世界一一在那里逻辑和概率规则统御着一切——迎回了启发式和社会动机发挥作用的现实世界中来。
《适应性思维》一本书适合对心理学、认知科学、统计学、经济学、社会学、哲学、人工智能和动物行为等研究领域感兴趣的广大读者阅读。它也为医生、艾滋病咨询师、刑法专家等实践工作者如何理解和交流不确定性和风险信息提供了可行的方案。

'If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men.' - Karl Popper, from the Preface Written in political exile during the Second World War and first published in two volumes in 1945, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is one of the most influential books of all time. Hailed by Bertrand Russell as a 'vigorous and profound defence of democracy', its now legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx exposed the dangers inherent in centrally planned political systems and through underground editions become an inspiration to lovers of freedom living under communism in Eastern Europe. Popper's highly accessible style, his erudite and lucid explanations of the thoughts of great philosophers and the recent resurgence of totalitarian regimes around the world are just three of the reasons for the enduring popularity of The Open Society and Its Enemies and why it demands to be read today and in years to come.

On its publication in 1957, The Poverty of Historicism was hailed by Arthur Koestler as 'probably the only book published this year which will outlive the century.'
A devastating criticism of fixed and predictable laws in history, Popper dedicated the book to all those 'who fell victim to the fascist and communist belief in Inexorable Laws of Historical Destiny.' Short and beautifully written, it has inspired generations of readers, intellectuals and policy makers. One of the most important books on the social sciences since the Second World War, it is a searing insight into the ideas of this great thinker.