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on History and Philosophy of Economics |
| By: | Peter Sinclair |
| Abstract: | In his essay on public credit, Hume advances two arguments in favour of government borrowing and five against. It is interesting to cast his various arguments |
| Keywords: | Government debt, deficits, David Hume |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bir:birmec:11-22&r=hpe |
| By: | Jesús Astigarraga (Universidad de Zaragoza) |
| Abstract: | «Reflexiones sobre el estado actual del comercio de España» —Reflections on the current state of commerce in Spain— was anonymously published in 1761. At the time both the treatise and its author, the merchant Simón de Aragorri, were well known. Nevertheless, the work vanished for centuries and there was not known copy available at disposal of historians until now. This article analyzes Reflexiones emphasizing the context within which the treatise was drawn up, the author's environment, his intellectual sources, and the economic significance of the book. Conclusions suggest that the treatise is essentially a translation-adaptation of a work by the French economist Jacques Accarias de Serionne. The objective of the text was reorienting the domestic and overseas economic policy of the Spanish monarchy. In particular, it pretended a restructuration of the Spanish Public Finances and to solve the monetary distress caused by the entrance of precious metals. It also aimed at reorienting the Uztáriz and Ulloa's protectionist, interventionist and industrialist approach towards a new strategy of economic growth based on agriculture and free trade. Its foundations also aroused a substantial change on the transatlantic commercial relationships. |
| Keywords: | Economic policy; international circulation of ideas; Spanish Enlightenment; Atlantic History; François Véron de Forbonnais; Jacques Accarias de Serionne; David Hume |
| JEL: | B11 B31 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ahe:dtaehe:1109&r=hpe |
| By: | Michel Bellet (Université de Lyon, Lyon, F-69007, France ; Université Jean Monnet ; CNRS, GATE Lyon St Etienne, Saint-Etienne, F-42000, France) |
| Abstract: | This article reveals and studies the connections between Bentham’s Defence of Usury (1787) and Saint-Amand Bazard (1791-1832), a founder of Saint-Simonianism. We first traces Bazard’s exposure to Bentham through his unknown friendship with Bentham’s publisher Etienne Dumont. After introducing in details the Saint-Simonian views on interest and money, we examines the significance of Bazard’s translation of Defence of Usury and his shared opposition against usure laws. We explain why the puzzling reference to Benthamite utilitarianism is not fortuitous but appears to justify a common ground between Bentham’s utilitarism and Saint-Simonianism. This connection did not survive the July Revolution. |
| Keywords: | utilitarianism, saint-simonism, interest rate, usury |
| JEL: | B1 E4 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:gat:wpaper:1135&r=hpe |
| By: | Michael Wohlgemuth |
| Abstract: | Is Friedrich von Hayek in some specific, perhaps paradoxical, way a "classical liberal paternalist"? My answer will be an unsatisfying "yes and no" depending not only on my interpretation of Hayek, but also on the manifold interpretations one can give to the concepts of paternalism and classical liberalism (or, indeed: liberty). I start with an interpretation of Hayek’s account of "modernity". Here, I hint at a first potential paradox in the form of a "magic triangle" composed of (a) Hayek’s praise and explanation of the evolutionary emergence of the spontaneous order of the market and civil society, (b) Hayek’s fierce opposition to modernist thinking and the fatal conceit of rationalist constructivism and (c) Hayek’s gloomy visions of politics, legislation, or public choice. Next, I shortly distinguish various dimensions of paternalism and confront these with Hayek’s classical liberalism. In the following parts, I offer a brief account of behavioral "anomalies" of public choices that are analogous to, and even more harmful than, those used as legitimizations of "libertarian paternalism" in the private realm. I end up with a qualified claim that at least in the realm of potentially self-damaging collective choices, Hayek might be called a (classical liberal) "paternalist". |
| Date: | 2011–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:evopap:2011-22&r=hpe |
| By: | Viktor J. Vanberg |
| Abstract: | The claim that the Darwinian paradigm of blind-variation-and-selective-retention can be generalized from the biological to the socio-cultural realm has often been questioned because of the critical role played by human purposeful design in the process of cultural evolution. In light of the issue of how human purposes and evolutionary forces interact in socio-economic processes the paper examines F.A. Hayek's arguments on the "extended order of the market," in particular the tension that exists between his rational liberal and his agnostic evolutionary perspective. |
| Date: | 2011–12–19 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:evopap:2011-19&r=hpe |
| By: | Barlo, Mehmet; Carmona, Guilherme |
| Abstract: | In order to remedy the possible loss of strategic interaction in non-atomic games with a societal choice, this study proposes a refinement of Nash equilibrium, strategic equilibrium. Given a non-atomic game, its perturbed game is one in which every player believes that he alone has a small, but positive, impact on the societal choice; and a distribution is a strategic equilibrium if it is a limit point of a sequence of Nash equilibrium distributions of games in which each player's belief about his impact on the societal choice goes to zero. After proving the existence of strategic equilibria, we show that all of them must be Nash. Moreover, it is displayed that in many economic applications, the set of strategic equilibria coincides with that of Nash equilibria of large finite games. |
| Keywords: | Strategic equilibrium; Games with a continuum of players; Equilibrium distributions |
| JEL: | C72 |
| Date: | 2011–12–13 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35549&r=hpe |
| By: | Harald Uhlig (University of Chicago - Department of Economics) |
| Abstract: | This paper is a non-technical and somewhat philosophical essay, that seeks to investigate the relationship between economics and reality. More precisely, it asks how reality in the form of empirical evidence does or does not influence economic thinking and theory. In particular, which role do calibration, statistical inference, and structural change play? What is the current state of affairs, what are the successes and failures, what are the challenges? I shall tackle these questions moving from general to specific. For the general perspective, I examine the following four points of view. First, economics is a science. Second, economics is an art. Third, economics is a competition. Forth, economics is politics. I then examine four specific cases for illustration and debate. First, is there a Phillips curve? Second, are prices sticky? Third, does contractionary monetary policy lead to a contraction in output? Forth, what causes business cycles? The general points as well as the specific cases each have their own implication for the central question at hand. Armed with this list of implications, I shall then attempt to draw a summary conclusion and provide an overall answer. |
| Date: | 2011–07 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:bfi:wpaper:2011-006&r=hpe |
| By: | Bonanno, Giacomo (University of CA, Davis) |
| Abstract: | We discuss a number of conceptual issues that arise in attempting to capture, in dynamic games, the notion that there is "common understanding" among the players that they are all rational. |
| Date: | 2011–11 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ecl:ucdeco:11-11&r=hpe |
| By: | L. Randall Wray |
| Abstract: | This paper takes off from Jan Kregel's paper "Shylock and Hamlet, or Are There Bulls and Bears in the Circuit?" (1986), which aimed to remedy shortcomings in most expositions of the "circuit approach." While some "circuitistes" have rejected John Maynard Keynes's liquidity preference theory, Kregel argued that such rejection leaves the relation between money and capital asset prices, and thus investment theory, hanging. This paper extends Kregel's analysis to an examination of the role that banks play in the circuit, and argues that banks should be modeled as active rather than passive players. This also requires an extension of the circuit theory of money, along the lines of the credit and state money approaches of modern Chartalists who follow A. Mitchell Innes. Further, we need to take Charles Goodhart's argument about default seriously: agents in the circuit are heterogeneous credit risks. The paper concludes with links to the work of French circuitist Alain Parguez. |
| Keywords: | Circuit Approach; Liquidity Preference; Banks as Ephor of Capitalism; J. M. Keynes; J. A. Schumpeter; A. Parguez; J. A. Kregel; Chartalist; Modern Money Theory; State Money; Credit Money; Default |
| JEL: | B2 B24 B25 B31 B51 B52 E11 E12 E41 E43 E51 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:lev:wrkpap:wp_700&r=hpe |
| By: | Robert Sugden |
| Date: | 2011–12–22 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:esi:evopap:2011-21&r=hpe |
| By: | John Hatgioannides (City University); Marika Karanassou (Queen Mary, University of London and IZA) |
| Abstract: | In this paper we aim to trace the roots of the ongoing economic mayhem and to unmask the chorus of the tragedy which plays on the world stage. The main thesis of our work is that, despite the triumphant rhetoric praising the merits of perfect competition, the global fields of the dysfunctional market system have mushroomed in what we call <i>Warrant Economics for the Free-Market Aristocracy</i>. Warrant Economics unfolds in two symbiotic tenets that constitute the subtle architecture of the neoliberal edifice: (i) the systemic creation and preservation of inequality via Call-Put policy options, and (ii) the systemic exploitation of inequality via novel and toxic forms of securitisation. In effect, the power structure of insiders' capitalism that we describe, through the costless appropriation of an intricate cobweb of Call-Put structures, has distorted competition and accelerated economic concentration. We view the income distribution effect, which favours the top 1%, and the business concentration effect, which gravitates competition towards oligopolistic/monopolistic industries, as the two sides of the Warrant Economics coin. We argue that the Warrant Economics state of capitalism has been legitimised by a degenerating research programme blossomed under the fallacy that economics is the "physics of society". In this faculty of thought, we perceive the Great Recession as a symptom of Warrant Economics, rather than as a tsunami-like event. |
| Keywords: | Warrant Economics, Call-Put policy options, Securitisation, Monopoly, Income distribution, Great Recession, Sovereign debt |
| JEL: | E66 G01 G10 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:qmw:qmwecw:wp686&r=hpe |
| By: | Giancarlo Bertocco (Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy) |
| Abstract: | The current crisis in the global economy is considered on a par with the Great Depression of the 1930s. We can therefore ask whether the crisis will lead economists to revise the mainstream theory. The first result presented in this paper is to show that the traditional theory does not permit the formulation of a coherent explanation of the causes of the crisis because it uses concepts that are not coherent with the dominant theory of finance. The second result is to show that these concepts are coherent with a theory of finance that can be elaborated on the basis of the lesson of Schumpeter, Keynes and Minsky. |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ins:quaeco:qf1116&r=hpe |
| By: | Halkos, George |
| Abstract: | This paper discusses the development of environmental economics from the Industrial Revolution in Europe to today. Specifically, it comments on the general similarities and differences between the representatives of the schools of economic thought concerning the environment. Among others, the issues of scarcity of natural resources, of population growth as well as the limits to growth are discussed and the various views are presented. The paper also comments on the trends of environmental, evolutionary and ecological economics. |
| Keywords: | Naturla resource scarcity; limits to growth; environmental economics |
| JEL: | N54 B12 B14 O13 B13 N53 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35580&r=hpe |
| By: | Thomas J. Miceli (University of Connecticut) |
| Abstract: | This essay offers some observations, from the perspective of an economist, on the usefulness of economics for understanding law. Economic analysis provides a coherent theoretical framework for unifying different areas of law based on the pursuit of efficiency. It does this by recognizing common problems across different areas, which give rise to solutions that, while outwardly different, have the same underlying form. In this way, economics provides a theory of law. But economists can also learn a lot about how the economy functions by thinking more carefully about the role of law in facilitating economic activity. The success of law and economics ultimately resides in the recognition of this fundamental interrelationship between the two disciplines. |
| Keywords: | Law and Economics |
| JEL: | K00 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:uct:uconnp:2011-25&r=hpe |
| By: | Ejan Mackaay |
| Abstract: | Good faith appears at once as a fundamental concept in all civil law systems, with a long history going back to Roman law, and yet as one whose nature and contents are ill-understood and controversial. The paper is an attempt to find out what new light the economic analysis of law can shed on it to help to clarify it. Good faith is used in two distinct senses, which traditional legal scholarship has identified as subjective and objective. In its subjective sense, good faith as justifiable ignorance of a relevant legal situation refers to having taken adequate precautions against such ignorance, the adequacy being a function of what is at stake and the likelihood of misapprehension. This is reminiscent of the logic of accident and accident prevention law developed in the economic analysis of tort or civil liability law. In the objective sense of not taking advantage, good faith is analysed as the exact opposite of opportunism. On opportunism there is a reasonably well-developed economic literature. Reciprocal gain, the founding concept of contract and of extensions such as the law of business enterprise, presupposes the absence of opportunism. Good faith in this sense may be said to underlie all of contract law. Yet human nature being what it is, individuals may be tempted by opportunistic acts and their potential victims are led to take costly precautions to guard against it. Law can make itself useful by providing safeguards against opportunism that are less costly than what contracting parties themselves can come up with. Together, these safeguards have to be as wide-ranging as is opportunism itself, yet individually they have to be specific enough to ensure legal certainty. Good faith itself remains as a residual concept, to be applied sparingly, with which to tackle situations on which the specific concepts provide no proper grip. Yet at the same time good faith, being the quintessential anti-opportunism concept, underlies the more specific concepts one finds in the Codes and allows one to see their unity. On a different level, an understanding of opportunism focuses attention on acts and facts that may be relevant in concrete novel situations to be judged by a court, where opportunism may be an issue. Economic analysis of law allows one to make sense of good faith in a meaningful way. <P>La bonne foi apparaît à la fois comme un concept fondamental dans tous les systèmes civilistes, avec une longue histoire remontant au droit romain, et comme une notion dont la nature et le contenu sont mal compris et controversés. Le présent texte vise à explorer dans quelle mesure l'analyse économique du droit permet de jeter un éclairage nouveau sur ce concept et de le clarifier ainsi. Le concept de bonne foi est employé en deux sens distincts, que la doctrine traditionnelle identifie comme le sens subjectif et le sens objectif. En son sens subjectif, la bonne foi correspond à l'ignorance justifiée d'une situation juridique, en particulier une déficience de titre. L'ignorance est justifiée dans la mesure où la personne a pris les mesures adéquates pour l'éviter. L'adéquation est fonction de l'importance de l'enjeu et de la probabilité d'une méprise. Formulée ainsi, la logique rappelle celle des accidents et de leur prévention, développée dans l'analyse économique du droit de la responsabilité ou du tort law. En son sens objectif, la bonne foi peut être présentée comme l'exact contraire de l'opportunisme, concept passablement déblayé dans la littérature économique. L'opportunisme se manifeste lorsque, dans un rapport de coopération entre deux ou plusieurs personnes, l'une d'elles s'affaire à modifier, par la ruse ou par la force, à son avantage et au détriment des autres, la répartition des gains conjoints résultant de ce rapport que chaque partie pouvait normalement envisager au moment de la création du rapport. Il perturbe le caractère gagnant-gagnant que doit avoir le contrat ou autre rapport de coopération et qui reflète la justice contractuelle. Le risque d'être victime d'opportunisme, de « se faire avoir », amène les acteurs économiques à prendre des précautions qui sont coûteuses et qui réduisent l'étendue des marchés. Le droit se rend utile en combattant l'opportunisme dans toutes ses multiples formes. En partie, cette défense prend la forme d'un éventail de concepts spécifiques qu'on trouve à travers les codes civils. Pour maintenir la certitude du droit, la bonne foi, concept anti-opportuniste de dernier ressort, mais aux contours flous, est employé seulement là où aucun concept spécifique ne peut faire l'affaire. Son utilisation devrait conduire à terme à de nouveaux concepts spécifiques qui vont mener une existence autonome dans le code. La bonne foi, comme absence d'opportunisme, demeure le principe résiduel sous-tendant l'ensemble du droit des contrats et des sociétés commerciales. La compréhension de l'opportunisme focalise l'attention du juriste sur des actes et des faits qui peuvent être pertinents dans des situations inédites d'opportunisme qui se présentent devant les tribunaux. L'analyse économique du droit permet de « retrouver » le concept de la bonne foi d'une manière significative, contribuant ainsi à la science juridique. |
| Keywords: | civil law, good faith, contract, contractual justice, opportunism, law & economics., droit civil; contrat; bonne foi; opportunisme; analyse économique du droit. |
| Date: | 2011–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2011s-74&r=hpe |
| By: | Ejan Mackaay |
| Abstract: | This paper uses Law & Economics as a tool of legal scholarship to analyse the concepts of good faith and contractual justice. Good faith is analysed as the exact opposite of opportunism. On opportunism there is a reasonably well-developed economic literature. Opportunism is present where, in a two or multi-party relationship, one of the participants schemes, by resorting to stealth or to force, to change in his or her favour the division of joint gains flowing from the relationship that each participant could normally look forward to when the relationship was set up. The win-win character that contracts and other relationships must have to be viable is thereby thrown out of kilter. The risk of becoming the victim of opportunism, of "being had", by such schemes leads economic actors to take precautions that are costly and reduce the size of markets. Law may render useful services by combating opportunism in all its many forms, where this can be done cost-effectively and at lower cost than participants themselves could attain. In part, this defence is assured through a host of specific concepts found throughout the Civil Code. But cases may arise where none of these specific concepts can comfortably be applied. For such cases, an open-ended concept of last resort is needed. Good faith is such a concept. To ensure the certainty of the law, good faith, the anti-opportunism tool of last resort but with fuzzy boundaries, must be used only where no specific concept will do. Its use implies that over time new more specific concepts will crystallise as decisions accumulate. These new specific concepts should then go on lead an autonomous existence in the Code. Good faith, as the absence of opportunism, remains the principle underlying all of contract law and company law. <P>Ce texte explore l'emploi de l'analyse économique du droit comme outil de doctrine pour analyser les concepts de bonne foi et de justice contractuelle. La bonne foi est présentée comme l'exact contraire de l'opportunisme, concept assez déblayé dans la littérature économique. L'opportunisme se présente lorsque, dans un rapport de coopération entre deux ou plusieurs personnes, l'une d'elles s'affaire à modifier, par la ruse ou par la force, à son avantage et au détriment des autres, la répartition des gains conjoints résultant de ce rapport que chaque partie pouvait normalement envisager au moment de la création du rapport. Il perturbe le caractère gagnant-gagnant que doit avoir le contrat ou autre rapport de coopération et qui reflète la justice contractuelle. Le risque d'être victime d'opportunisme, de « se faire avoir », amène les acteurs économiques à prendre des précautions qui sont coûteuses et qui réduisent l'étendue des marchés. Le droit se rend utile en combattant l'opportunisme dans toutes ses multiples formes. En partie, cette défense prend la forme d'un éventail de concepts spécifiques à travers les codes. Pour maintenir la certitude du droit, la bonne foi, concept anti-opportunisme de dernier ressort, mais aux contours flous, est employé seulement là où aucun concept spécifique ne peut faire l'affaire. Son utilisation devrait conduire à terme à de nouveaux concepts spécifiques qui vont mener une existence autonome dans le code. La bonne foi, comme absence d'opportunisme, demeure le principe résiduel sous-tendant l'ensemble du droit des contrats et des sociétés commerciales. |
| Keywords: | civil law, good faith, contract, opportunism, law & economics, droit civil; contrat; bonne foi; opportunisme; analyse économique du droit. |
| Date: | 2011–12–01 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:cir:cirwor:2011s-73&r=hpe |
| By: | Maurizio Pugno (University of Cassino) |
| Abstract: | The recent debate on happiness in economics has revived interest in Scitovsky’s 1976 book The Joyless Economy, which aims at explaining the income-happiness paradox, i.e. "why [American] unprecedented and fast-growing prosperity had left its beneficiaries unsatisfied." A dynamic economic model will distil Scitovsky’s proposal, which has not yet been integrated into conventional economics. It will show that people’s dissatisfaction may be due to their excess of demand for ‘comfort’, which requires consumption goods, and to their lack in pursuing ‘creative activities’, which instead essentially require leisure and a skill, called ‘leisure skill’, that people have failed to develop. Since comfort includes comparing consumption with that of others, Scitovsky also strengthened the conventional solution of the paradox. |
| Keywords: | Scitovsky, income-happiness paradox, comfort, creative activities, leisure skill |
| JEL: | A12 D60 J24 Z10 |
| Date: | 2011–12–08 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:css:wpaper:2011-07&r=hpe |
| By: | Jan Luiten van Zanden (Department of Economics, Universities of Utrech and Stellenbosch) |
| Abstract: | The paper discusses some evidence, based on a review of new literature on economic history, about what is referred to as the Sen-hypothesis, that increasing human agency (of both men and women) is a key factor in economic development. It briefly discusses various dimensions of agency (or its absence): slavery (as the absolute suppression of human agency), access to markets, agency concerning marriage, and political participation. This concept perhaps also allows economic historians to move beyond the historical determinism that is central to much recent work in this field. |
| Keywords: | agency, economic development, economic history |
| JEL: | O10 O15 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:sza:wpaper:wpapers151&r=hpe |
| By: | Giancarlo Bertocco (Department of Economics, University of Insubria, Italy) |
| Abstract: | Rajan has earned a well-deserved reputation for having been one of the few to have hypothesized in a famous paper presented at the 2005 Jackson Hole conference that a disastrous financial crisis could have occurred. The key thesis put forward by Rajan was that the radical changes that had taken place over the previous decades rendered the economic system more fragile in that they induced the financial system to create a high amount of risk. The aim of this paper is to show: i) that Rajan’s thesis is not coherent with the mainstream theory according to which finance does not create risk; ii) that a meaningful theory capable of explaining the meaning of the elements used by Rajan to assert that finance creates risk can be elaborated on the basis of the lesson of Keynes and Schumpeter |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:ins:quaeco:qf1115&r=hpe |
| By: | Matthias Doepke; Michèle Tertilt; Alessandra Voena |
| Abstract: | Women's rights and economic development are highly correlated. Today, the discrepancy between the legal rights of women and men is much larger in developing compared to developed countries. Historically, even in countries that are now rich women had few rights before economic development took off. Is development the cause of expanding women's rights, or conversely, do women's rights facilitate development? We argue that there is truth to both hypotheses. The literature on the economic consequences of women's rights documents that more rights for women lead to more spending on health and children, which should benefit development. The political-economy literature on the evolution of women's rights finds that technological change increased the costs of patriarchy for men, and thus contributed to expanding women's rights. Combining these perspectives, we discuss the theory of Doepke and Tertilt (2009), where an increase in the return to human capital induces men to vote for women's rights, which in turn promotes growth in human capital and income per capita. |
| JEL: | J10 N30 O10 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17672&r=hpe |
| By: | Flesch J.; Kuipers J.; Schoenmakers G.; Vrieze K. (METEOR) |
| Abstract: | We prove the existence of a subgame-perfect epsilon-equilibrium, for every epsilon> 0, in a classof multi-player games with perfect information, which we call free transition games. The noveltyis that a non-trivial class of perfect information games is solved for subgame-perfection, withmultiple non-terminating actions, in which the payoff structure is generally not semi-continuous.Due to the lack of semi-continuity, there is no general rule of comparison between the payoffsthat a player can obtain by deviating a large but finite number of times or, respectively,infinitely many times. We introduce new techniques to overcome this difficulty. Our constructionrelies on an iterative scheme which is independent of epsilon and terminates in polynomial timewith the following output: for all possible histories h, a pure action a(1,h) or in some cases twopure actions a(2,h) and b(2,h) for the active player at h. The subgame-perfect epsilon-equilibriumthen prescribes for every history h that the active player plays a(1,h) with probability 1 orrespectively plays a(2,h) with probability 1-delta and b(2,h) with probability delta. Here, deltais arbitrary as long as it is positive and small compared to epsilon, so the strategies can bemade “almost” pure. |
| Keywords: | mathematical economics; |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:umamet:2011047&r=hpe |
| By: | Tan, Fangfang; Xiao, Erte |
| Abstract: | This paper investigates how punishment promotes cooperation when the punishment enforcer is a third party independent of the implicated parties who propose the punishment. In a prisoner's dilemma experiment, we find an independent third party vetoes not only punishment to the cooperators but punishment to the defectors as well. Compared with the case when the implicated parties are allowed to punish each other, both the cooperation rate and the earnings are lower when the enforcement of punishment requires approval from an independent third party. |
| Keywords: | Social dilemmas; third party; punishment; cooperation; experiment |
| JEL: | D63 C92 C72 |
| Date: | 2011–12–21 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:pra:mprapa:35473&r=hpe |
| By: | Jean-Claude Barbier (Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne) |
| Abstract: | What has been analysed in France mainly under the term "précarité de l'emploi" over the past 30 years was mostly dealt with differently in other countries (atypical, non-standard employment). Research on these issues dates back to the 1970s in sociology and institutional economics. More recently some political scientists have endeavoured to link up the labour market theme with developments in systems of social protection and they are talking about "dualism" and "dualization". Despite the constant intellectual investment put into the topic, it is striking that indicators for comparative measurement of the phenomenon have remained rather unsophisticated, as the basic opposition between what Eurostat names "temporary contracts" and "open-ended contracts". On the other hand, because of the spreading of the effects of work and employment flexibilisation into new countries, new categories are appearing since the early 2000s (Prekariat, vulnerable workers, and even "precarity"). |
| Keywords: | Precariousness, non-standard work, internal labour markets, atypical employment, dualization, Europeanization. |
| JEL: | J2 J80 J82 |
| Date: | 2011–12 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:mse:cesdoc:11078&r=hpe |
| By: | Serra Garcia, M.; Damme, E.E.C. van; Potters, J.J.M. (Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research) |
| Abstract: | We compare communication about private information to communication about actions in a one- shot 2-person public good game with private information. The informed player, who knows the exact return from contributing and whose contribution is unobserved, can send a message about the return or her contribution. Theoretically, messages can elicit the uninformed player's contribution, and allow the informed player to free-ride. The exact language used is not expected to matter. Experimentally, however, we find that free-riding depends on the language: the informed player free-rides less, and thereby lies less frequently, when she talks about her contribution than when she talks about the return. Further experimental evidence indicates that it is the promise component in messages about the contribution that leads to less free-riding and less lying. |
| Keywords: | Information transmission;lying;communication;experiment. |
| JEL: | C72 D82 D83 |
| Date: | 2011 |
| URL: | http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:dgr:kubcen:2011139&r=hpe |