IBES Concept Paper

This paper guided the original formation of IBES in 2002, the same year the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Kahneman-Smith for their work in Behavioral Economics/Economic Psychology and Experimental Economics. The importance of jointly considering both Institutional and Behavioral Economics has also been confirmed in the Nobel Prize being awarded to Ostrom-Williamson in 2009 for their work in institutional economics, the "We-side" of "I-economics". As Dan Bromley (University of Wisconsin) noted regarding the 2009 Award (e-mail communication, October 12, 2009), "...this is a wonderful signal of the importance of processes INSIDE of going concerns... villages/communities (Ostrom's case), and hierarchies (Williamson's case). The interesting action is not at the boundary (where markets mediate) but inside where people interact."