Sigmund A. Wagner-Tsukamoto

Biography

My research is interdisciplinary. It draws on institutional economics for discussing questions of organization, management, philosophy, ethics, religion, and the history of political and organisational economic thought. In normative perspective, my research connects to the understanding that economics is grounded in a mutual gains program and ideals such as the wealth of nations; aiming to steer, conventionally seen, ethical outcomes of social interactions through systemic intervention with incentive structures. In this way I trace ‘economics as ethics’ in my research. By doing so, I can challenge basic assumptions about the nature of texts and concepts; their key motivations and significance; and how they reflect on modernity and modern ethics (including Smith's economics and how it promotes ethics). Here, I point towards the emergence, however basic, of modernity even in ancient thought. From this vantage point, moral claims are aligned with (institutional and constitutional) economic intervention strategies. Some of my earlier research includes the anthropological and cognitive study of green, environmentally-friendly consumer behaviour.