A little manifesto on Learning and Economics. Actually, all the projects spring from a common intellectual ground that combines economic theory with some aspects of evolution and psychology, as I now shall explain.
Economists have a well defined theoretical approach.
Individual people are self-interested utility maximizers who interact through markets, and the markets produce equilibrium outcomes. It has been widely extended, with some success, to a variety of settings in economics and other social sciences. It lacks a theoretical account of how equilibrium becomes established so, in particular, it offers no convincing way of choosing among multiple equilibria. The practical flaw is that the approach offers no guidance as to when actual outcomes will closely approximate equilibrium outcomes. Hence the pattern of success and failure in explaining labor markets, macroeconomics, law, politics, etc., often surprises its supporters as well as its opponents.