Samuel Bowles is research professor at the Santa Fe Institute where he heads the Behavioral Sciences Program. He taught economics at Harvard University from 1965 to 1973 and since then at the University of Massachusetts, where he is now emeritus professor, and at the University of Siena from 2002 to 2010 where he continues to occasionally teach.

Bowles’ current research includes theoretical and empirical studies of political hierarchy and wealth inequality and their evolution over time. His studies on cultural and genetic evolution have challenged the conventional economic assumption that people are motivated entirely by self-interest. Recent papers have also explored how organizations, communities, and nations could be better governed knowing that altruistic and ethical motives are common in most populations.

His scholarly papers have appeared in Science, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and the Economic Journal, among others.

His most recent book is The Moral Economy: Why good laws are no substitute for good citizens (Yale University Press, 2016). Other recent books include A Cooperative Species: Human reciprocity and its evolution (with Herbert Gintis, Princeton University Press, 2011), The new economics of inequality and redistribution (Cambridge University Press, 2012), and Microeconomics: Behavior, Institutions and Evolution (Princeton University Press, 2004). He is currently working on Equality’s Moment: The origins and future of economic disparity and political hierarchy.

He has also served as an economic advisor to the governments of Cuba, South Africa, and Greece, U.S presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy and Jesse Jackson, the Legislature of the State of New Mexico, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, and South African President Nelson Mandela.

With CORE (Curriculum Open-access Resources for Economics), an international collaboration of economists, he is currently developing a new curriculum for undergraduate economics.