The Invisible Handshake

Proverbs and Economics
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-3-032-25196-1
Verlag: Springer

Buch, Englisch, 88 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 160 g

Reihe: SpringerBriefs in Economics

This book argues that formal economic inquiry and proverbial wisdom share a deep epistemic kinship, each functioning as a refined form of everyday cognition for navigating scarcity, uncertainty, and choice. Through peculiar case studies it also considers the contrasts between mountain and maritime economies, rural and metropolitan societies, and explores the profound influence of culture, religion, and gender on regional economic trajectories.. The core thesis is that proverbs encode key economic principles—such as opportunity cost, risk, and incentives—as culturally embedded lessons that illuminate the intuitive and institutional foundations of economic life. Exploring themes that span finance, labor, behavioral biases, inequality, gender, and policymaking, the book investigates how proverbs and economic models converge, diverge, and enrich one another. Framed by the guiding question of what proverbs reveal about how people think and decide in economic contexts, it ultimately presents these two bodies of knowledge as complementary perspectives that together clarify the human predicament of acting under constraint.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Bovi, Maurizio

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Wirtschaftstheorie, Wirtschaftsphilosophie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Verhaltensökonomik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Proverbs and Critical notions in Economics.- Proverbs, Consumption Theory, and Financial Economics.- Proverbs and Labor Economics.- Proverbs, Poverty, and Inequality.- Proverbs and Behavioral Economics.- Proverbs, Regional Economies, and Gender Economics.- Proverbs, Policymaking, Welfare, and Public Choice.- Proverbs and Institutional Economics.- Proverbs, Power, and Conditional Thinking: Toward a Critical Economics of Folk Wisdom.

Über Autor(innen)

Maurizio Bovi , Ph.D., is a senior scientist at the Italian National Institute of Statistics and an adjunct professor at Sapienza University of Rome (Italy). A former economic advisor to the Italian Ministry of Economy, he has published numerous articles and books and received the I. Kerstenetzky Award at the 2008 CIRET Conference.