I read some of Gintis' reviews and some of the Wiki article on him. From what I can tell he manages to give Behavioral Economics a bad name. Perhaps the behavioralism to which he refers is Skinnerian Stimuls-Response conditioning. He came up in that mileiu and was born in 1940. He has his bachelors and masters in mathematics and only went into economics, at Harvard, for his PhD. One of his major areas of interest is game theory and, like John Nash, seems to have a libertarian bent. He certainly does not identify as a "progressive" or a "liberal" but, rather lamely, claims to be "non partisan" and focused on policy -- as if it was not over policies that political factions fight.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."