Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

World Service,26 May 2011,18 mins

Economic man or beast?

Business Daily

Available for over a year

Can a drug addict be rationally addicted? And when is a factory worker like a worker ant? In the last of a special series on the history of economics, Michael Blastland looks at the mysteries of human behaviour, asking if our sympathies and mood swings can do more to explain our economic fortunes than the apparent logic of economic law. Are we economic man or economic beast?

Programme Website
More episodes