Research

I work on social ontology, and in particular the nature of institutions. I also do experiments on cooperation, coordination, group identity, and I write occasionally on the methodology of economics.

Understanding Institutions (Princeton University Press) has been awarded the 2018 Joseph B. Gittler Award by the American Philosophical Association, “for an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy of one or more of the social sciences”.

The Methodology of Experimental Economics was published by Cambridge University Press in 2005 .

Some papers, old and new

(c) Andrea Branzi

Rational Coordination without Beliefs”, Erkenntnis 88 (2023): 3163–3178 (with Camilla Colombo).

Coordination without Meta-representation”, Philosophical Psychology 35 (2022): 684-717 (with Camilla Colombo).

Social Kinds: Historical and Multi-functional”, European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (2023), 32.

Rescuing Ontological Individualism”, Philosophy of Science 89 (2022), pp. 471-85. Here is a video of a talk given at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, September 2018.

Preferences: Neither Behavioural nor Mental”,  Economics & Philosophy 35 (2019): 383-401.

The Effect of Group Identity on Distributive Choice: Social Preference or Heuristic?”, Economic Journal 127 (2017): 1047-1068 (with Antonio Filippin).

Philosophy of the Social Sciences: Naturalism and Anti-Naturalism”, in Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press, 2016.

A Unified Social Ontology”, Philosophical Quarterly 65 (2015): 177-201 (with Frank Hindriks).

Institutions, Rules, and Equilibria: A Unified Theory”, Journal of Institutional Economics 11 (2015): 459-480 (with Frank Hindriks). Followed by commentaries by Masahiko Aoki, Ken Binmore, Geoffrey Hodgson, John Searle, Vernon Smith, and Bob Sugden (plus our reply).

Reciprocity: Weak or Strong? What Punishment Experiments Do (and Do Not) Demonstrate”, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (2012), pp. 1-59 (target article, followed by commentaries and reply).

Paradigmatic Experiments: The Ultimatum Game from Testing to Measurement Device”, Philosophy of Science, 75 (2008), pp. 658-669.

Has Game Theory Been Refuted?”, Journal of Philosophy 103 (2006), pp. 239-263.

Heterogeneous Agents in Public Goods Experiments”, Experimental Economics, 8 (2005), pp. 35-54 (with Roberto Burlando).

A short History of Experimental Economics, prepared for The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics.

A short Bibliography of the philosophy of experimental economics, with post-2005 publications.

For a full list of books and papers, see my publications page


Surprisingly, some people disagree with me. If you want to know why, have a look here.