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In the first part of this thesis I demonstrate that the best arguments we have for the equal moral worth of all human beings are incorrigibly defective. This is a problem because many people hold that equality between persons in the political, legal and social realms depends on and is justified by their equal value in the moral realm. I solve the problem in the second part of my thesis by developing an account of human worth which cuts the chain of dependency so that political, legal and social equality needn’t hang on moral equality. The result is an account of human value as neither equal nor unequal and which preserves and satisfies the spirit of moral and political egalitarianism. What is that spirit? That everyone matters and no-one more than any other.

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Does ambiguity affect the efficiency of information aggregation in dynamic markets? To the present day there is a sparse and fragmented literature pointing towards an answer. This Thesis studies dynamic markets under ambiguity and examines under what conditions information gets aggregated. Three particular perspectives are investigated: i) Does information get aggregated when traders are myopic and ambiguity averse? In the first Chapter it is proved that information gets aggregated only when a 'separable under ambiguity' security is traded. In case the security is not 'separable under ambiguity', then there exist markets in which information does not get aggregated. The class of 'separable under ambiguity' securities is proved to be non trivial. Finally, it is proved that even if the security is not 'separable under ambiguity', traders will reach an agreement about the price of the security. ii) Does information get aggregated when traders are strategic and ambiguity averse? By defining appropriately an equilibrium concept for infinite horizon games of incomplete information in a setting with ambiguity, it is proved that in a market with a 'separable under ambiguity' security information gets aggregated in every equilibrium in pure strategies. The second chapter concludes by proving that when the security is not 'separable under ambiguity', then there exists an equilibrium in which information does not get aggregated. iii) Are the previous theoretical predictions met in real life? In the third chapter a laboratory experiment is included. The experimental design follows the theoretical models of the first two chapters. The results of the experiment provide significant evidence in favor of the results of the first two chapters.

This thesis explores interactions among agents whose rationality is bounded in distinct ways. It consists of three self-contained chapters/papers. Chapters 2 and 3 consider myopic and hard-wired strategy revisions based on evolutionary game dynamics, while Chapter 4 deals with rationally inattentive agents who acquire costly information in a flexible manner. The thesis, thus, spans two extremes of the range of models with boundedly rational agents. The first paper proposes a novel way to formalize matching mechanisms in evolutionary games. The proposed formalization nests group selection models such as the haystack (Maynard Smith, 1964) and trait-group models (Wilson, 1975). It is shown that evolutionary optima can be obtained as Nash equilibria under appropriately defined matching rules. In the second paper matching rules are endogenized and the co-evolution of cooperation and matching is studied in social dilemma situations. It turns out that only full-or-null assortativity levels are evolutionarily stable. The extent to which efficient outcomes are achieved by this endogenization process is evaluated, which crucially depends on the structure of the particular interaction considered. The third paper extends recent models of flexible information acquisition to an uncountable-action-space setting: a beauty contest coordination game. Necessary conditions for the existence of equilibria with well-behaved strategies are derived. It is established that affine equilibria exist only if the fundamental is normally distributed. A higher coordination motive, a more concentrated prior distribution of the fundamental and higher information costs lead to less attention being paid to the fundamental. Moreover, flexible information acquisition technology is shown to result in equilibrium multiplicity under certain parameter combinations.

The main goal of this thesis is to provide a full account of the deficiencies of mainstream economics largely through different economists’ own criticisms, and to subsequently describe an alternative methodology that allows for their overcoming. The only caveat that is indissolubly associated with the adoption of the proposed alternative methodology however is that the ‘scientific method’, as commonly understood, needs be abandoned; or rather it needs redefinition. To meet this highly challenging task this thesis is effectively divided into two broad sections. In the first section, which expands from Chapter 1 to Chapter 3, a theoretical approach is taken highlighting the ultimate philosophical foundations upon which the two different methodologies rest. The different assumptions that are made about the nature of the social world are made explicit and it is shown how the ‘scientific method’ along with the mainstream economic paradigm collapse when contemplating with certain features of the social world. A number of particular problematic areas of mainstream economics are also explicitly analysed and their equivalent treatment within the alternative methodology maintained and hence their resolution are also explicated. The second part of this thesis includes Chapters 4 and 5 where two topics of major economic concern are tackled. Minimum wages and pension financing are analysed both under the conventional and the alternative methodological prism. It is shown how the alternative methodology put forward allows for a considerably more realistic representation of the actual economic world, while many novel, counter-intuitive findings with regard to these two topics emerge. Most importantly perhaps, many of the specifics of the new method that have been explicated theoretically in the first section of the thesis are now demonstrated in practice.