Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Introduction

This is a very well done examination of the core methods and concepts of PPE. I think this is best suited for advanced undergraduates or early graduate students, and is excellent as a reference text for anyone interested in PPE. It is really well written, engaging, and rigorous. I highly recommend it.

This is a pretty good introduction to PPE, although the diagrams aren’t always labeled in the way the text says they are. Furthermore, some of the paradoxes of decision theory (for example) are discussed much too quickly, especially given that they are some of the most philosophically interesting topics considered in the book. I commend the authors for trying to pack so much material into such a small book, but I think they might have actually saved the reader some time by making it a bit longer and considering the key points in more depth so that the reader needn’t go elsewhere.Overall, I think it is a good book to read if you are getting into PPE. However, I bought it hoping I could use it as the main text for a PPE class and I’m not sure I can.

This book is a phenomenal resource for teaching both undergraduate and graduate students the rudiments of what PPE is and the methods that comprise this still young and exciting field.

This is a new edition of Jerry Gaus’s groundbreaking textbook in PPE. The first edition emerged from lectures Jerry gave at Tulane, Duke and UNC in the early 2000s. The book included important insights about how economics can help us confront the tradeoffs inherent in designing political institutions, and how philosophical reflection about the assumptions economists make in modeling behavior can improve economics. More importantly, the book invited the reader to ask questions for which there are no easy answers.A few years before Jerry died I was lucky enough to teach a course with him at Arizona and I recall him saying that he needed to fix some technical errors in the first edition, as well as expand its scope. Jerry couldn’t have picked a better co-author than his former student, John Thrasher. Thrasher not only corrected mistakes; he also expanded and re-organized the existing content while honoring the spirit and preserving the structure of the original book. In addition, Thrasher added two important new chapters—one on advanced topics in game theory, and one on social norms, which includes how norms emerge, and how they can serve as salient Nash equilibria in complex games.The new edition significantly improves the original. The prose is clear, the price is affordable, and the concepts are important for anyone interested in exploring the intersection of Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. It is especially suitable for a Gateway PPE course. Jerry will be missed, but his spirit lives on in his publications, in the memories of those of us who were lucky enough to have him as a teacher, and in the outstanding work of former students like John Thrasher.