The Economics of Paradise

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 1-8

3. Prologue

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 9-11

4. Why and How to Study the Paradise Story in Economic Terms

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 13-42

5. Looming Capital Contests in Paradise: No Land of Cockaigne

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 43-69

6. Agents of Paradise and the Rise of Self-interest

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 70-98

7. The Breakdown of Co-operation in Paradise: The Rise of Anarchy

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 99-119

8. Outcomes of the Paradise Interactions: Gains and Losses, Winners and Losers, Rational Fools

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 120-149

9. Why Was Paradise Lost? And Is This a Cause for Lament?

   • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

   Pages 150-184

10. Concluding Remarks: How Modern Is Religion or Is it a Road to the Past?

    • Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

    Pages 185-214

11. Back Matter

    Pages 215-262

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This book searches for the origins of modern thinking in one of the best-known stories of our cultural heritage. By applying institutional and constitutional economics to biblical interpretation, it uses new approach to reconstruct the Paradise story. The author challenges the old conceptual dualism between economics and theology/philosophy.

• Paradise Story
• Institutional/Constitutional Economic Reconstruction
• Modernity
• Dualism Thesis
• Unitary Thesis
• Capital Contest
• Interaction Conflict
• Prisoner's Dilemma
• Rational Religion
• agents
• economics
• philosophy
• religion

Sigmund Wagner-Tsukamoto is Lecturer in Business Ethics at the School of Management of the University of Leicester, UK. He has widely published on questions of ethics and economics, including the institutional and constitutional economic analysis of biblical stories. His previous publications include Is God an Economist? (also published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), Human Nature and Organization Theory (2003), and Understanding Green Consumer Behaviour (1997).

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