Social Norms And Economic Institutions

Author : Kenneth J. Koford
Publisher : University of Michigan Press
ISBN 13 : 9780472102426
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Social Norms and Economic Institutions written by Kenneth J. Koford and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the role of values and social norms in the functioning of economic institutions

Author : Jean-Philippe Platteau
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136600450
Total Pages : 409 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Institutions, Social Norms and Economic Development written by Jean-Philippe Platteau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order for economic specialization to develop, it is important that well-defined property rights are established and that suspicion and fear of fraud do not pervade transactions. Such conditions cannot be created ex abrubto, but must somehow evolve. What needs to develop is not only suitable practices and rules themselves, but also the public agencies and moral environment without which generalized trust is difficult to establish. The cultural endowment of societies as they have developed over their particular histories is bound to play a major role in this regard, and the matter of cultual endowment is one of the central themes of this book. On the other hand, division of labour does not only require well-enforced property rights and trust in economic dealings. It is also critically conditioned by the thickness of economic space, itself dependent on population density. This provides the second major theme of the volume: market development, including the development of private property rights is not possible, or will remain very incomplete, if populations are thinly spread over large areas of land. The book makes special reference to sub-Saharan Africa.

Author : Jean-Philippe Platteau
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1136600442
Total Pages : 444 pages
Book Rating : 4.49/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Institutions, Social Norms and Economic Development written by Jean-Philippe Platteau and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-12-08 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In order for economic specialization to develop, it is important that well-defined property rights are established and that suspicion and fear of fraud do not pervade transactions. Such conditions cannot be created ex abrubto, but must somehow evolve. What needs to develop is not only suitable practices and rules themselves, but also the public agencies and moral environment without which generalized trust is difficult to establish. The cultural endowment of societies as they have developed over their particular histories is bound to play a major role in this regard, and the matter of cultual endowment is one of the central themes of this book. On the other hand, division of labour does not only require well-enforced property rights and trust in economic dealings. It is also critically conditioned by the thickness of economic space, itself dependent on population density. This provides the second major theme of the volume: market development, including the development of private property rights is not possible, or will remain very incomplete, if populations are thinly spread over large areas of land. The book makes special reference to sub-Saharan Africa.

Author : Mark Gradstein
Publisher : MIT Press
ISBN 13 : 026207284X
Total Pages : 251 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Institutions and Norms in Economic Development written by Mark Gradstein and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Experts address "the development puzzle"--unprecedented growth coupled with unequal distribution of that growth across different countries--and focus on the importance of institutional arrangements and norms and culture.

Author : Jean Ensminger
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610448405
Total Pages : 492 pages
Book Rating : 4.06/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Experimenting with Social Norms written by Jean Ensminger and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2014-10-22 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Questions about the origins of human cooperation have long puzzled and divided scientists. Social norms that foster fair-minded behavior, altruism and collective action undergird the foundations of large-scale human societies, but we know little about how these norms develop or spread, or why the intensity and breadth of human cooperation varies among different populations. What is the connection between social norms that encourage fair dealing and economic growth? How are these social norms related to the emergence of centralized institutions? Informed by a pioneering set of cross-cultural data, Experimenting with Social Norms advances our understanding of the evolution of human cooperation and the expansion of complex societies. Editors Jean Ensminger and Joseph Henrich present evidence from an exciting collaboration between anthropologists and economists. Using experimental economics games, researchers examined levels of fairness, cooperation, and norms for punishing those who violate expectations of equality across a diverse swath of societies, from hunter-gatherers in Tanzania to a small town in rural Missouri. These experiments tested individuals’ willingness to conduct mutually beneficial transactions with strangers that reap rewards only at the expense of taking a risk on the cooperation of others. The results show a robust relationship between exposure to market economies and social norms that benefit the group over narrow economic self-interest. Levels of fairness and generosity are generally higher among individuals in communities with more integrated markets. Religion also plays a powerful role. Individuals practicing either Islam or Christianity exhibited a stronger sense of fairness, possibly because religions with high moralizing deities, equipped with ample powers to reward and punish, encourage greater prosociality. The size of the settlement also had an impact. People in larger communities were more willing to punish unfairness compared to those in smaller societies. Taken together, the volume supports the hypothesis that social norms evolved over thousands of years to allow strangers in more complex and large settlements to coexist, trade and prosper. Innovative and ambitious, Experimenting with Social Norms synthesizes an unprecedented analysis of social behavior from an immense range of human societies. The fifteen case studies analyzed in this volume, which include field experiments in Africa, South America, New Guinea, Siberia and the United States, are available for free download on the Foundation’s website:www.russellsage.org.

Author : Eric Posner
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674042308
Total Pages : 276 pages
Book Rating : 4.01/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Law and Social Norms written by Eric Posner and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the role of law in a society in which order is maintained mostly through social norms, trust, and nonlegal sanctions? Eric Posner argues that social norms are sometimes desirable yet sometimes odious, and that the law is critical to enhancing good social norms and undermining bad ones. But he also argues that the proper regulation of social norms is a delicate and complex task, and that current understanding of social norms is inadequate for guiding judges and lawmakers. What is needed, and what this book offers, is a model of the relationship between law and social norms. The model shows that people's concern with establishing cooperative relationships leads them to engage in certain kinds of imitative behavior. The resulting behavioral patterns are called social norms. Posner applies the model to several areas of law that involve the regulation of social norms, including laws governing gift-giving and nonprofit organizations; family law; criminal law; laws governing speech, voting, and discrimination; and contract law. Among the engaging questions posed are: Would the legalization of gay marriage harm traditional married couples? Is it beneficial to shame criminals? Why should the law reward those who make charitable contributions? Would people vote more if non-voters were penalized? The author approaches these questions using the tools of game theory, but his arguments are simply stated and make no technical demands on the reader.

Author : Mark Granovetter
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674975219
Total Pages : 254 pages
Book Rating : 4.17/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Society and Economy written by Mark Granovetter and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A work of exceptional ambition by the founder of modern economic sociology, this first full account of Mark Granovetter’s ideas stresses that the economy is not a sphere separate from other human activities but is deeply embedded in social relations and subject to the same emotions, ideas, and constraints as religion, science, politics, or law.

Author : Mary C. Brinton
Publisher : Stanford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780804742764
Total Pages : 352 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The New Institutionalism in Sociology written by Mary C. Brinton and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2001 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Institutions play a pivotal role in structuring economic and social transactions, and understanding the foundations of social norms, networks, and beliefs within institutions is crucial to explaining much of what occurs in modern economies. This volume integrates two increasingly visible streams of research—economic sociology and new institutional economics—to better understand how ties among individuals and groups facilitate economic activity alongside and against the formal rules that regulate economic processes via government and law. Reviews "This volume is a welcome addition to the expanding literature on institutional analysis. . . . Besides sociologists, we are afforded the pleasure of contributions from anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, and scholars located in schools of law and education. . . . One of the pleasures of the volume is the wide range of topics, times, and locales addressed by the authors. . . . In all these diverse situations, the application of institutional queries and approaches enhances our understanding and appreciation of the endlessly rich and diverse nature of social life."—Contemporary Society "This admirable book makes a strong contribution to institutional theory, has many excellent chapters . . . and is a model for interdisciplinary exchange and cross-fertilization. . . . It is dense with interesting ideas and points for debate, and I heartily recommend it."—Sociological Research Online

Author : Douglass C. North
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780521397346
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.40/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance written by Douglass C. North and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-10-26 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analytical framework for explaining the ways in which institutions and institutional change affect the performance of economies is developed in this analysis of economic structures.

Author : Michael Hechter
Publisher : Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN 13 : 1610442806
Total Pages : 451 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Social Norms written by Michael Hechter and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2001-03-15 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Social norms are rules that prescribe what people should and should not do given their social surroundings and circumstances. Norms instruct people to keep their promises, to drive on the right, or to abide by the golden rule. They are useful explanatory tools, employed to analyze phenomena as grand as international diplomacy and as mundane as the rules of the road. But our knowledge of norms is scattered across disciplines and research traditions, with no clear consensus on how the term should be used. Research on norms has focused on the content and the consequences of norms, without paying enough attention to their causes. Social Norms reaches across the disciplines of sociology, economics, game theory, and legal studies to provide a well-integrated theoretical and empirical account of how norms emerge, change, persist, or die out. Social Norms opens with a critical review of the many outstanding issues in the research on norms: When are norms simply devices to ease cooperation, and when do they carry intrinsic moral weight? Do norms evolve gradually over time or spring up spontaneously as circumstances change? The volume then turns to case studies on the birth and death of norms in a variety of contexts, from protest movements, to marriage, to mushroom collecting. The authors detail the concrete social processes, such as repeated interactions, social learning, threats and sanctions, that produce, sustain, and enforce norms. One case study explains how it can become normative for citizens to participate in political protests in times of social upheaval. Another case study examines how the norm of objectivity in American journalism emerged: Did it arise by consensus as the professional creed of the press corps, or was it imposed upon journalists by their employers? A third case study examines the emergence of the norm of national self-determination: has it diffused as an element of global culture, or was it imposed by the actions of powerful states? The book concludes with an examination of what we know of norm emergence, highlighting areas of agreement and points of contradiction between the disciplines. Norms may be useful in explaining other phenomena in society, but until we have a coherent theory of their origins we have not truly explained norms themselves. Social Norms moves us closer to a true understanding of this ubiquitous feature of social life.