Behavioural economics contributes to a mega field of research in an attempt to fully understand the integral mechanism of multifarious economies and markets driven by and driving the behavioural tendencies of individuals and institutions as a whole. It chiefly encompasses the empirical tools to draw an inference and study the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on tastes, preferences, and thereby public choices and market decisions. Further, In an attempt to categorically study the predicament of human emotions and ethics in the field of economics, analysts often critically examine the nature of the economic growth and its societal impacts, conditioned directly or indirectly by the economic objectives and the construct of the social milieu.

 

Many scholars have hence provided critical findings to study the attributes of ethics and morality in the economic foundations. One such finding is the role of Pentecostalism in economic development, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. While it has frequently been argued upon that religiosity can impede progress, this case exemplifies a positive case highlighting the impact of Pentecostalism on Africa’s economic future, promoting entrepreneurship, hard work, and even the family structure to suffice the economic advancements by stressing on ethics and hope that can efficiently spur the movement out of poverty. Furthermore, the role of moral agents in the economic institutions is also highlighted by positing that such leaders can be ‘harbingers of hope’, stressing the welfare of the people. It also emphasises the related idea of empowerment and social inclusion of various social, economical, and political groups to heal the socio-economic and political fractures of a nation. However, many forms of this assumingly egalitarian distribution of resources cannot always be defended as morally better, as at the very least, this also includes the inherent grotesqueries of statist socialism and command economies. Therefore, as we move ahead in the twentieth century, the absolute form of dominance, either by the state to regulate the market economies or, contrastingly, the total affluence of capitalism, cannot be presumed to be the best for economic advancements. In simpler words, the Indian context of the adoption of a mixed economy rather than a socialist or capitalist one, to maximise both the profits as the social well welfare, for example, chiefly illustrates the moral compass in policy framing, underlining that citizens and institutions cannot just be viewed as agents of economic maximizations, whose behaviour could easily be changed by setting financial incentives either by the public or the private sectors. Thereby establishing the prominence of ethical planning and chiselling of an economy to advance its growth.

 

Hence, this field of research is undeniably quite thought-provoking by genuinely refreshing the eminence of ethics and prudence in economics, signifying that no economic or political institution, irrespective of its goals and objectives, can stand devoid of this attribute under study. The practitioners of this domain hence have had a major influence on business, government, and financial markets as prominently accounted in the famous books by the titles, Predictably Irrational; Thinking, Fast and Slow; and Nudge, to name a few, all of which have significantly suffused the popular culture. Dan Ariely, in his Predictably Irrational, advocates that ‘ethics are hard’, symbolising the precedence of market norms over the social norms, generally. The placebo effect, for instance, may serve the benefits of engineered well-being in the realms of medical sciences, but in recent times, it has also increasingly created a mistrust amongst the individuals and the economic agents, exemplified by how a higher-priced aspirin works faster in pain-relief than its lower-priced counterpart. This hence helps us to investigate the eminence of social norms parallel to market norms to ethically garner trust and faith of the individuals and institutions, as Adam Smith has notably mentioned in his works that a cost-benefit analysis in economics is also deeply rooted in morality and honesty of the economic agents. Dishonesty and theft, therefore, only worsen the ties amongst all the units in an economic spectrum.

 

The drift between the classical economic model of study and the relatively new discipline of incorporating the behavioural tendencies has often been manifested in former economic research and analysis; however, in recent times, the two domains have integrated to a much recognised and holistic field of study that has led to prominent deductions and conclusions by the social scientists, economists and analysts alike. The investigation of the humongous incorporation of behavioural economics in modern economies and decision-making institutions is, therefore, a sprouting concern. To restate the main foci of the discussion, one may note that, whilst the construes of ambivalence and conflict persist in the study of behavioural choice theories and demand further research, the tectonic underlining of behavioural choices cannot be deserted from the study and analysis of public choices, modern organisations, markets, economies, and democracies, yes, but most importantly ethics, because ‘economics without ethics is a caricature, ethics without economics is a fairy- tale’, and who would mind believing that? Thanks to Jakub Bozydar Wisniewski for that thought-provoking analogy, voilà: I say that refreshing my algorithm-controlled news feed, relishing my space in the data economy based on surveillance capitalism.