Justin Leduc

I am an economist and lecturer at the University of Vienna, specialising in the theoretical foundations of human cooperation. My research combines game-theoretic modeling with interdisciplinary insights from experimental work, philosophy, history, and institutional analysis.

Currently, I focus on social normativity and its practical role in cooperation schemes. In everyday life, social normativity shows through, for instance, in the existence of regulative powers—powers we exert when we make claims on others, i.e., when we effectively tell others what they should or should not do.

I investigate how regulative powers emerge in social interactions as well as how they influence our capacity to cooperate effectively. These questions require a deep understanding of the social world and drive my interdisciplinary research at the intersection of economics and philosophy.

I also conduct research in philosophy of science, initially motivated by a desire to understand why social normativity receives limited attention in economic models. This interest has since expanded, and I now integrate insights from philosophy of science into my teaching to encourage students' reflectiveness about the diverse uses to which economic models are put.