Neuroeconomy: An Emerging Field of Theory and Practice

This article gives a short, introductory overview of basic aspects of the emerging field of neuroeconomics, as a contemporary approach to economic theory and practice. In many ways, neuroeconomics can be regarded as a new, multi- and inter-disciplinary orientation to economic thinking that interweaves the current international renewal of the economic sciences, in particular the “new experimentalism”, and the most recent technological advances in brain research, ecology and environmentalism. Also, the field integrates aspects of trans-culturalism and social anthropology. Given that recent progress in neuroscience and neurotechnology may profoundly modify globalized human culture (and perhaps human behaviour, if not identity), neuroeconomics can be considered as an experimental field that is closely related to the most avant garde developments in the applied sciences. Thus, it has potential to become an important pillar of a broader, and more differentiated post-crisis economic theory that looks beyond neoliberal reductionisms, and is oriented toward multi-dimensionality, integration of different scientific insights, sustainability and an applied, more realistic humanism.