Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to Know

Overview Professor John Komlos is a former chairman of the Department of Economic History at the University of Munich and also taught as a visitor at Harvard, Duke, and the University of Vienna. In his book, “Foundations of Real-World Economics: What Every Economics Student Needs to Know and Doesn’t Get in the Usual Principles Text”, he examined mainstream economics and contemporary economic policies. This book has been translated into Chinese, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Russian, and other languages are forthcoming. This can be categoriSed as a major reference book to study the hopelessness of mainstream economic thought in explaining contemporary economic issues. Professor Komlos received a PhD in history in 1978 and a second PhD in economics in 1990, both from the University of Chicago. His academic career mainly consists of research and study of the effect of economic development on human biology. This background is reflected in the contents and sub-topics of his book in which he established the links of economics with neurology, psychology, sociology, ideology, and humanism. He advocates for a new paradigm: Capitalism with a human face by differentiating humanistic and mainstream economics based on their fundamental characteristics. Humanistic economics accepts the foundational achievements of sister disciplines as well as behavioral psychology. Instead of using mathematical logic, he emphasises considering human sentiments and morality, which cannot be incorporated into mathematical equations. In his own words, “I believe that our starting point should not be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations (1776), but his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), in which Smith asserted forcefully that we possess an innate empathy toward our fellow human beings.”