.com
In a nod to the renewed sexiness of the subject of trade policy, the BBC re-broadcast in April-May 2025 my ten-part series from 2018, with a new final episode broadcast on 2nd May 2025. Details here. The episodes will be available for at least a year after they go out.
Episode 6 of the 4th season of IAST’s Crossing Channels podcast, in which Diane Coyle, Jacques Crémer and I try to cut through to the essentials in asking what Europe should do about technological innovation, under the skilful chairmanship of Richard Westcott. Listen here.
I have an essay (in French) in this volume edited by Alain Trannoy and Arundhati Virmani and published by Odile Jacob.
J’ai un chapitre en français dans ce livre sorti en janvier 2025.
Un petit extrait de mon chapitre:
“Une vision assez courante des sciences sociales les représente comme étant en lutte éternelle contre les séductions du récit. Le récit, c’est l’éloge de l’histoire individuelle, anecdotique, suffisamment atypique pour être remarquée – alors que les sciences sociales s’intéressent aux statistiques, à l’expérience générale d’une population, aux réalités agrégées où l’individu se fond dans la masse. On entend même parfois que notre attachement au récit relève d’une « addiction » : c’est la thèse, par exemple, d’un livre du philosophe Alex Rosenberg publié en 2018 par la MIT Press et intitulé How History Gets Things Wrong : The Neuroscience of our Addiction to Stories.[1] Rosenberg va très loin dans sa dénonciation : « Narrative history is always, always wrong. It’s not just incomplete or inaccurate but deeply wrong, as wrong as Ptolemaic astronomy ». Mais même des chercheurs qui sont moins hostiles par principe aux récits ont tendance à penser que l’amélioration des sciences sociales vient de l’utilisation des méthodes statistiques pour surmonter les biais inhérents aux récits que chaque discipline a hérité de son passé. Ceci est le point de vue du livre publié en 2021 par le politologue Matt Grossman et intitulé : How Social Science Got Better : Overcoming Bias with More Evidence, Diversity and Self-Reflection.[2]
Il est indéniable que la place des statistiques est devenue bien plus centrale aux sciences sociales depuis quelques années. Doit-on en conclure que la valeur du récit est devenue moindre, ou encore que le récit soit destiné à disparaître d’une conception des sciences sociales vraiment scientifique, dans le meilleur sens du terme ?Cet essai proposera une réponse négative à la question. Le récit non seulement ne disparaîtra pas. Il sera encore plus ancré dans la pratique des sciences sociales, même les sciences sociales les plus quantitatives….”
[1] Rosenberg (2018).
[2] Grossman (2021). Morgan (2021) montre que l’utilisation du récit dans le travail des historiens économiques a parfois servi à combler des lacunes dans leurs données disponibles. Un point de vue français sur ces biais dans les travaux des historiens se trouve dans Hartog (2003, 2021), et notamment dans son analyse du « présentisme ». “
This page will direct you to the themes of my current research. Some themes have pages of their own, in particular:
Research on the economics of religion here.
Research on behavioral decision making here.
Research on gender, networks and marriage markets here.
In addition I am working with Guido Friebel on the medical science of ageing and its relationship to the organisational economics of selecting, motivating and retiring leaders. Our book Leaders Who Lose It: Dementia, Power and the Case for an Age Limit will be published by Polity Press in January 2027. More details soon.
I am working with Sergey Gavrilets on the evolution of zero-sum worldviews. We have a new paper published in PNAS. Sergey’s excellent book Social Influence and the Logic of Collective Action will be published by Princeton University Press in July 2026.
My Google scholar page is here.
You can listen here. Very thoughtful questions from Louise, who is an excellent interviewer.
Competing for Souls: Paul Seabright Explores Religion’s Economic Power
Michael is a great interviewer – he’d read The Divine Economy carefully and thought hard about the arguments. It lasts a bit over an hour and a half.
I’m happy to hear that The Divine Economy made the longlist, together with 15 other excellent titles out of 600 submitted. It did not make the shortlist, which was announced on September 17th.
The last episode in Season 3 of the wonderful IAST Podcast series Crossing Channels is now available here, in which I take part with the excellent Diane Coyle and Ruth Mace. It’s hosted by the incomparable Rory Cellan-Jones in his farewell appearance.
Watch this space for an announcement about my book project with Guido Friebel, provisionally entitled Alternatives to Assassination: How to persuade elderly leaders to concede power gracefully.
The Divine Economy has been selected by Martin Wolf of the Financial Times as one of the best summer books of 2024 (Economics). When I asked Dalle to provide an accompanying image, this is what resulted (after a few adjustments….).
Image generated by DALL·E, an AI model by OpenAI.
Book events:
AALIMS conference in Princeton, 11th April 2025.
The book was published by Princeton University Press on 14th May 2024. It was long listed for the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year Award 2024, and was a finalist in the 2025 PROSE awards of the Association of American Publishers.
Here is a contribution to PUP’s Ideas page to mark the release: “A sermon from a mountebank? Religious messaging in the age of AI“.
Here is an extract in Foreign Policy: “The Divine Marketplace is Pretty Crowded”.
Here is an extract in The Milken Institute Review.
Launch events were held at the University of Glasgow on 28th May and at the London School of Economics on 29th May. The lecture at the LSE was recorded, and is available on YouTube here.
I discussed the book on 11th June during the launch event for the Starling 2024 Compendium, with Harvard Business School’s Amy Edmondson.
I gave a talk in a panel at the Society for Scientific Study of Religion, Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, 18th October 2024, with the excellent David Hollinger.
I gave the Score Strand III Lecture at the University of Cambridge on 17th November 2024, and have given book talks at the University of California at Berkeley, Chapman University and the University of Texas at Austin.
I published a piece on 30th August in IAI News entitled “How Religion Wrote the Playbook for Big Tech: Studying Religion from the Outside In“.
Reviews, podcasts and interviews are available here.
The announcement page is here, and you can order it there are well.
You can also order it on Amazon here.
Details of the French translation are here.
The data files for the Statistical Appendix are available here.
