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This contribution commemorates Geert Hofstede, who recently passed away, as a pioneer in the study of culture and institutions. It does so by touching on some of the details of his personal life and connecting these with his professional career. The latter was devoted to developing the paradigm of national cultures based on empirical analysis, and to relate it to organisational behaviour. Closer scrutiny reveals that four distinct phases may be identified. Hofstede first started as an ‘undercover’ engineer and next moved to social psychology. During the second phase, he developed the first four dimensions of natural culture. During the third, Hofstede connected these national dimensions to organisational ones. During the last, he added two new cultural dimensions and developed additional practical applications. Finally, the article considers the reception, criticism, and further elaborations of Hofstede's contributions.

This contribution commemorates Oliver Williamson, who recently passed away, as one of the founding fathers of Transaction Cost Economics (TCE). It does so by touching on some of the details of his personal life and connecting these with his professional career. The latter was devoted to putting the study of institutions on the economic agenda. Closer scrutiny reveals that three phases may be identified. Williamson first developed an interest in analysing vertical integration. During the second phase, he elaborated this interest in TCE, and during the third, he positioned his contributions within the area of institutional economics. Furthermore, the article considers the various influences of institutional and organizational economists on Williamson. Finally, the article considers the reception, criticism, and further elaborations of Williamson's contributions.

Economic classroom experiments are controlled interactive learning exercises targeting the comprehension of economic concepts in an inductive way. Aiming at increasing students' knowledge of economic concepts, two types of economic classroom experiments are examined in a sample of 134 secondary school students. In the interactive research condition, 44 students participate in a series of four experiments, whereas in the constructive condition, 49 students observe four videos showing peers engaged in similar experiments. The 41 students in the control condition attend four lessons based on the model of direct instruction. ANCOVAs and contrast analyses indicate that interactive learning from experiences in economic classroom experiments is beneficial for secondary school students' knowledge of economic concepts. Reasons for this finding are elaborated on the basis of observed student activities, interactions, communication, and self-reported experiences.

Self-reported happiness does not generally increase with rising income, as established by Richard Easterlin. We argue that the current debate in economics about the income-happiness paradox has paid too little attention to the theoretical foundation of the expected positive relation between income and happiness, seeking an empirical resolution through better data and more elaborate estimating equations instead. We return to the history of economics and revisit the contributions of Irving Fisher and Kenneth Boulding for the missing economic theory that underlies the income-happiness paradox. According to both Fisher and Boulding, \"consumer capital\" is the ultimate source of welfare, whereby consumer capital is defined as an accumulated stock of tangible and intangible instruments that yield a stream of services over their useful life. In the view of Fisher and Boulding, it is the utilization of this capital stock that renders happiness to individuals. Moreover, income that pays for the goods of consumption can be a \"bad,\" reflecting the cost of maintaining the consumer capital stock. Therefore, Fisher and Boulding's insights bring a new perspective to the Easterlin paradox, showing that the empirical finding that rising income contributes only little, if anything, to levels of happiness has been overemphasized at the expense of the theoretically more relevant relation between consumer capital and happiness, and the exact role of income therein.

This paper starts from the perspective that giving meaning to life is a key function of religion: through its narratives, rituals, creeds, and practices, religion clothes life in a meaningful frame. Interestingly, though, meaning of life has not yet appeared in studies on the relation between religion and economic behavior. As meaning of life may prove to be a crucial factor in understanding this relation, this paper seeks to develop a new approach to understanding the link between religion and economic behavior from the viewpoint of meaning of life.

Sargent called his latest venture Bounded Rationality in Macroeconomics and tried to make connections with Simon's programme of bounded rationality and artificial intelligence. The irony is that rational expectations theory, born from the same mother—Carnegie-Mellon University—as bounded rationality, after trying to kill her big sister, then apparently came around to embracing her in the person of Sargent. But was Simon's interpretation of bounded rationality the same as Sargent's? Did Simon and Sargent mean the same by artificial intelligence? Not quite. The different interests of Sargent and Simon resulted in vastly different interpretations of bounded rationality and artificial intelligence.

Goldman joins the ranks of epistemologists, philosophers, and science studies scholars trying to use economic models of science. For Goldman, these models are part of social rather than individual epistemics. His hope is that these models will illustrate that non-epistemic goals of individual scientists such as professional success do not necessarily undermine epistemic aims of science such as the acquisition of truth. This paper shows that there are inconsistencies between Goldman's individual and social epistemics, that these models do not live up to Goldman's standards of evaluation, and that the economic models that Goldman uses are not social.

The concept of rational expectations starts from the idea that individuals should not make systematic mistakes. Agents learn from their mistakes, and they draw intelligent inferences about the future from what is happening around them. The fact that there is no universal interpretation of the idea of rational expectations reflects the underlying notion that there is no generic science. Economist Thomas Sargent depended heavily upon convenience to define rationality. While he claimed to be searching for the rational \"this\" and the optimal \"that,\" he was driven to reduce everything to the weak expedient of convenience to justify his own work. Sargent's quest for a more scientific macroeconomics was dominated by engineering conceptions. Accepting the fact that there were no neoclassical dynamics that commanded much consensus anywhere, Sargent sought to create a new common language for economics through the use of engineering metaphors. However, his analysis relied on outdates engineering techniques.

In the Netherlands, the redistribution of unpaid housework from women to men is very limited, despite the fact that women’s labour force participation and level of education have increased significantly over the past decade. We use the feminist economic household bargaining approach to analyse male partners’ contribution to housework, with primary data from heterosexual couples. We collected the data from two mutually exclusive groups who either supply or demand paid household services through two online agencies. The results show that, for the lower-class households (those supplying services), men do more unpaid housework when their female partner earns a relatively high income. For the higher-class households (those demanding services), we find no such effect for women’s income. Instead, we find that, when men earn relatively high incomes, they reduce their contribution to housework. Moreover, we find that, with a higher family income, more paid household services are hired. We conclude that, for the lower class, income insecurity seems to stimulate men to do more housework, allowing women to do more paid work, whereas, for the higher class, more personal and more family income appears to be an escape for men from doing more housework.