Philosopher Francesco Guala joins Erasmus School of Economics

Despite his young age, Professor Guala (1970), who holds the Chair of Political Economy at the University of Milan, is already one of the world’s leading philosophers of the social sciences. And presumably he is the world’s leading exponent of the naturalistic approach to the philosophy of the social sciences. For Guala, the social and behavioral sciences do not only span economics (as the alleged queen of the social sciences), but also sociology, political science, law, anthropology and psychology. As a philosopher, Francesco Guala reflects on new trends in economics, such as experimental economics; as a practicing economist, he also actively engages in experimental research. All this makes him uniquely equipped to contribute to economics’ opening up to neighboring social sciences, psychology and philosophy.

With his seminal The Methodology of Experimental Economics (Cambridge University Press 2005) Francesco Guala almost single-handedly pioneered and developed the by now flourishing field of philosophy of experimental economics. Guala published widely in various top journals in the fields of economics, philosophy and science. In his latest book entitled ‘Understanding Institutions: The Science and Philosophy of Living Together’ (Princeton University Press 2016), Guala proposes a new unified theory of social institutions that combines the best insights of philosophers and social scientists who have written on this topic. He presents a theory that combines the features of three influential views of institutions: as equilibria of strategic games, as regulative rules, and as constitutive rules.

The concurrent advent of both Professor Francesco Guala and Professor Alex Voorhoeve gives a boost to the further development of the Economics & Humanities programme of Erasmus School of Economics.