Professor Bob Sugden (UEA) gave a keynote lecture entitled, ‘The community of advantage’ at the Ninth International Conference of the French Association of Experimental Economists, which took place at the University of Nice (14–15 June 2018).

This presentation was linked to the publication of Bob’s 9th book – “The Community of Advantage: A Behavioural Economist’s Defence of the Market” by Oxford University Press. 

As Bob explains in a blog post by the School of Economics at UEA, "For decades, economists have been known for their commitment to theories that treat ordinary consumers and workers as highly rational decision-makers.  Until recently, the idea that psychological ideas and research methods could be useful in economics was not taken seriously.

This psychological approach, now called ‘behavioural economics’, was pioneered by a few groups of wayward economists in the 1980s.  But this is now one of the fastest-growing and most fashionable fields of economics". 

We featured the book in our June edition of our NIBS newsletter and you can read more from Bob on the University of East Anglia’s blog published by their School of Economics.

Bob has also presented on this topic at:

• Allied Social Science Associations annual conference - a ‘Critical book symposium’ on the book,  organised by International Network for Economic Method (5 January 2019)
• Happiness, Capabilities and Opportunities (keynote speaker) at the University of Naples, (15-17 November 2018)
• Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, California - a workshop about the book (4 April 2019)
• A Forum at the Adam Smith Institute, London (17 April 2019)
• Dealing with normative issues in behavioural welfare economics - at the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics, Rotterdam (29 Nov 2019)
• Online seminar organised by Ofcom (6 May 2020)  
• Philosophy, Politics and Economics seminar (online), Center for Study of Economic Liberty, Arizona State University (9 October 2020)
• Philosophy of Economics seminar (online), Centre for Philosophy of Social Science, University of Helsinki (19 October 2020)

Bob was a funded NIBS Co-Investigator from December 2012 to September 2020, and continues to collaborate closely with the Network..