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Toward an Evolutionary and Moral Science: Remarks upon Receipt of the Veblen-Commons Award
Abstract
Thorstein Veblen asked in 1898 why economics is not an evolutionary science; he also proposed a Darwinian paradigm shift for economics. Among the implications reviewed here was his claim that Darwinian principles applied to social entities as well as to biological phenomena. It is also argued that economists have additional reasons for taking Darwinian evolution seriously. Recent work on the evolution of altruism, cooperation and morality show that we are on the brink of developing an evolutionary-grounded theory of human motivation that breaks from the selfish utility-maximizer lambasted by Veblen. This new theory accepts a biological as well as a cultural foundation for moral dispositions. As noted here, the neglected British institutional economist John A. Hobson — who was an acquaintance of Veblen — foreshadowed this approach.
... Os aspectos comportamentais da Economia Institucional vebleniana, desde o final do século XIX, trazem elementos de outras ciências para analisar os indivíduos na Economia. Neste sentido, uma das principais contribuições relacionadas aos aspectos institucionais do comportamento dos indivíduos é oferecida por Thorstein Bunde Veblen, considerado um dos precursores do institucionalismo e fundamental para a análise evolucionista da Economia (Hodgson, 2012). Este autor salienta a importância para a Ciência Econômica de orientar-se pelos desenvolvimentos de outras ciências, como a Psicologia e a Sociologia, que estudam o ser humano (Pessali, 2015). ...
... Thorstein Bunde Veblen, economista e sociólogo americano, é um dos principais pilares da Economia Institucional com ênfase nas discussões sobre instituições e comportamento dos indivíduos (Cosgel, 1997;Hodgson, 2012). De acordo com Hodgson (1998), Veblen possui influência evolucionária e multidisciplinar, e foi o primeiro economista que elaborou uma teoria econômica e institucional com bases darwinianas. ...
A Economia tradicional ignora elementos institucionais do comportamento humano. Entretanto, avanços nesta temática incorporam contribuições de outras ciências - Psicologia e Sociologia - e resgatam autores que enfatizam a importância das instituições para compreender o comportamento humano nas diferentes sociedades, como é o caso de Thorstein Bunde Veblen. Diferente da concepção de “homem econômico”, tradicionalmente entendido como isolado e dotado de racionalidade perfeita, o problema deste trabalho está centrado na possibilidade de avançar no estudo do comportamento dos indivíduos na Economia com base nas contribuições de Veblen. O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar os aspectos institucionais do comportamento dos indivíduos na Economia por meio da abordagem vebleniana. Veblen faz referência aos hábitos e aos instintos como forma de abranger as instituições e utiliza a ideia de consumo conspícuo para justificar a presença desses elementos no comportamento. O estudo do comportamento dos indivíduos considera contextos históricos, interações sociais e instituições.
... The role of the institutional framework in the management of small businesses has been developed in the evolutionary way, thus it has the period of its historical formation. As an example of this we can see the concept of the relations of the institutional evolutional formation developed by Hodgson G. M [10]. ...
... The changes in human beings have an impact on all other objects. These issues are also discussed by Hayek (see Rembold, 2006) and by Hodgson (1999bHodgson ( , 1999aHodgson ( , 2001Hodgson ( , 2005Hodgson ( , 2007Hodgson ( , 2012Hodgson ( , 2013. However, they were developed later than those mentioned above. ...
The concept of human nature builds the basis for thinking about economics and its
fundamental elements such as methodology, methods and crucial theories. Therefore, changes
in the concept of human nature lead to changes in the fundamentals of economics. The goal of
the paper is to present this impact using the example of evolutionary and neoclassical
economics. The method applied to this research is, among others, a content analysis of the
selected texts developed within neoclassical and evolutionary economics and the research
undertaken about them. The analysis proves that the main differences between these economic
schools might be explained by the diverse assumptions about human nature.
Одним із напрямів наукових досліджень у сфері взаємодії національних
економік у глобальному економічному середовищі є пошук оптимальної моделі
формування зовнішньоекономічних зв’язків з паритетним дотриманням меж
відкритості і заходів протекціонізму як чинників забезпечення розвитку
національного господарства та прогресивних структурних зрушень в економіці
країни, що інтегрується.
Зовнішньоекономічна політика з орієнтацією на протекціоністські заходи
чи, навпаки, тяжінням до лібералізації, має бути узгоджена з рівнем
конкурентоспроможності і макроекономічної стійкості як фундаментальних
засад економічного зростання та прогресивного розвитку країни........Аргументи на користь протекціонізму спираються на існуючу практику
диспаритетності взаємодії країн з різним рівнем економічного розвитку. У
цьому контексті протекціонізм слід розглядати як дієвий інструмент усунення
негативних наслідків такої взаємодії для країн, відкритість економік яких не
узгоджена з рівнем їх конкурентоспроможності і стійкості. Лібералізація
зовнішньоекономічних відносин для таких економік деструктивно впливає на
темпи економічного зростання і поглиблює структурні дисбаланси цих країн,
дедалі більше поляризуючи світ-економіку.
Аналіз аргументації на користь лібералізації чи протекціонізму обумовив
формулювання логічних, але протилежних за своєю суттю висновків –
антиномій. Подібна антиномія є свідченням об’єктивної оцінки складного
процесу оптимізації зовнішньоекономічної політики.
Компаративний аналіз успішних національних практик діяльності корпорацій та їх взаємодії з державою і суспільством дозволяє визначити важливі та актуальні для економіки України принципи та механізми функціонування корпоративного сектору, що є потужною складовою національної економіки та обумовлює динаміку її розвитку [1, с. 121; 3, с. 445- 461].
The article demonstrates the institutional and numerical analysis, which allows ones to conclude that the newest energy technologies, especially in energy sources of variable or stochastic power, must meet modern integrated indicators that affect producers, consumers, society, and the environment as a whole, while traditional energy technologies meet the traditional financial and economic criteria.
Współczesne spojrzenie na procesy rozwoju terytorialnego coraz silniej eksponuje sprawność otoczenia instytucjonalnego dla prowadzenia działalności gospodarczej oraz organizowania życia społeczności miejskich i regionalnych. W perspektywie tej upatruje się podstaw procesów ekonomicznych zarówno w instytucjach formalnych (np. przejrzystość i efektywność prawa, sprawność działania przedsiębiorstw i organizacji sektora publicznego), jak i pozaformalnych (takich jak czynniki kulturowe, poziom zaufania społecznego, sposób zorganizowania społeczności i społeczeństw). Pozwala to dostrzec, że w warunkach rosnącej mobilności kapitału, ludności, towarów i informacji pewne czynniki odpowiedzialne za rozwój gospodarczy wciąż pozostają „zlokalizowane”, choć ich charakter bywa trudno uchwytny.
Zjawisko terytorialnego zróżnicowania instytucjonalnych czynników rozwoju społeczno-gospodarczego skłania do sięgnięcia po dorobek intelektualny ekonomii instytucjonalnej, w której podejmowane są liczne próby wyjaśniania przyczyn tych rozbieżności. Celem publikacji jest wskazanie możliwości zastosowań ekonomii instytucjonalnej – jako dynamicznie rozwijającej się gałęzi nauk ekonomicznych – w analizowaniu procesów rozwoju terytorialnego, przede wszystkim w kontekście relacji między instytucjami, bliskością i obecnym rozumieniem pojęcia „przestrzeń”.
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Contemporary analyses of territorial development processes expose more and more often the impact of institutional environment on the economies, as well as on local and regional communities. This perspective takes into consideration both formal and informal institutions. It claims that such factors, as: transparency and efficiency of laws and regulations, efficient functioning of enterprises and public sector organizations, but also culture and the level of trust in the society, affect essentially the level of development, not only in national but also local and regional economies. What is more, in the conditions of growing mobility of capital, people, goods and information, certain institutional factors responsible for economic development are still localized, although their nature is sometimes elusive.
This book aims at identification of the possible applications of institutional economics, in the analysis of territorial development processes, especially in the context of the relations between institutions, proximity, and the contemporary current understanding of the concept of “space”. The review and classification of various strands of institutional economics in terms of their helpfulness for the study of territorial development processes, highlights the role of institutions as more and more important factor of economic development.
The reasoning of this monograph allowed to conclude high usefulness of various fields of institutional economics in the study of local and regional development processes, as well as the possibility of treating them as complementary research approaches. However, one of the important conditions for use of the achievements of institutional economics in the study of the processes of territorial development is a combination of data, theoretical base, as well as research methods and researchers. As far as the local and regional development policy is concerned, this work makes it possible to form a thesis that the effectiveness of this policy depends on the awareness of the complexity of the process of institutional transformation. Furthermore, the modern territorial development is the result of the hybridization of formal and informal institutions, resulting from the search for their optimal combination of different institutional layers in various spaces.
Among the addressees of the book, we can mention the representatives of economic science, geography, management, and social scientists engaged in the exploration of institutional factors responsible for the socio-economic development at local and regional level. It can be also interesting for the specialists of land-use planning, urban and regional economics, local government managers and employees, as well as workers of central government agencies responsible for regional planning, urban policy and spatial policy.
This paper opposes the concepts defined by Thorstein Veblen and Joseph Schumpeter about the role of "public organizations" in the process of economic advance. The goal is to apply these categories to facilitate understanding of the strategic position taken by the Brazilian government about the involvement of Brazilian economy in the world economy. Based on studies of experts the paper concludes that the current framework of Brazilian government suffers from serious theoretical delay and ideological bias regarding the globalization process. A narrow conception of the world of Brazilian leaders favors the choice of isolationist targets that seek to build a productive system in their own image and likeness.
This paper explores the implications for economic analysis, societal well-being, and public policy of the movement of care services (such as child and elder care) from home to market. A broad empirical overview sets the stage for the argument that this process cannot be properly evaluated using only a priori judgments about the suitability of marketization. The context in which markets operate is crucial, and while the growth of market provision poses some risks, it also offers some potential benefits.
This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of cooperation in productive ventures, conceived of as collective action endeavours that require cooperation rather than mere coordination. It is argued that cooperative behaviour is grounded on three kinds of ‘common goods’, defined as goods that are shared and recognized as beneficial by the workers. These comprise common goals, relational satisfaction, and moral norms and values. The commonly held goods are associated with motives and behavioural rules which constitute both the reasons for cooperating and the means through which the dilemmatic nature of cooperation is overcome. It is further argued that the binding character of these rules is closely linked to humans’ ability and opportunity to communicate. Normative guidelines relative to management practices and directions for future research are also derived.
Several leading mainstream economists including Gary Becker have treated habit as serially correlated behaviour resulting
from deliberate choices. This approach puts choice before habit but involves assumptions of extensive memory and decision-making
capacity. By contrast, earlier authors such as William James, John Dewey and Thorstein Veblen saw deliberation and choice
as a contingent outcome of habits, where the latter are defined in terms of acquired dispositions rather than overt behaviour.
The approach of this second group is more consistent with an evolutionary perspective and the limited computational capacities
of the human brain.
Darwin himself suggested the idea of generalizing the core Darwinian principles to cover the evolution of social entities.
Also in the nineteenth century, influential social scientists proposed their extension to political society and economic institutions.
Nevertheless, misunderstanding and misrepresentation have hindered the realization of the powerful potential in this longstanding
idea. Some critics confuse generalization with analogy. Others mistakenly presume that generalizing Darwinism necessarily
involves biological reductionism. This essay outlines the types of phenomena to which a generalized Darwinism applies, and
upholds that there is no reason to exclude social or economic entities.
High-performance organizations and economies work on the basis not only of material interests but also of Adam Smith's "moral sentiments." Well-designed laws and public policies can harness self-interest for the common good. However, incentives that appeal to self-interest may fail when they undermine the moral values that lead people to act altruistically or in other public-spirited ways. Behavioral experiments reviewed here suggest that economic incentives may be counterproductive when they signal that selfishness is an appropriate response; constitute a learning environment through which over time people come to adopt more self-interested motivations; compromise the individual's sense of self-determination and thereby degrade intrinsic motivations; or convey a message of distrust, disrespect, and unfair intent. Many of these unintended effects of incentives occur because people act not only to acquire economic goods and services but also to constitute themselves as dignified, autonomous, and moral individuals. Good organizational and institutional design can channel the material interests for the achievement of social goals while also enhancing the contribution of the moral sentiments to the same ends.
Neoclassical theoretical approaches dominate modern health economics. However, the peculiarities of healthcare provision are
so unusual that neoclassical theory is especially unsuited to the area. Even mainstream health economists often abandon Paretian
welfare considerations to focus on needs instead. Problems relating to uncertainty and externalities are also widely acknowledged.
This article shows that there are additional important pecularities of healthcare that are relatively neglected in the literature.
Some of these concern healthcare needs: while health itself is a universal need, needs for healthcare provision are largely involuntary, varied and idiosyncratic. These issues have important consequences for the planning of
healthcare systems and the extent of transaction costs in any market-based system. These factors, combined with the inherent
dynamism of modern healthcare needs and capabilities, make institutional and evolutionary approaches especially suitable for
healthcare economics.
This study developed from an issue of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy and a subsequent conference. It examines the main economic concepts and policy instruments of the emerging environmental policy agenda of the 1990s, and introduces analytical issues regarding the roles of markets and governments. Following an editorial introduction and a literature survey which identifies the key problems, the main chapters consider the theory and techniques of environmental economics, and their applications in regional, national and international contexts, with particular reference to; valuation of environmental damage, global warming, environmental taxation, and tradeable permits. The conclusion presents a survey of US environmental policies. -P.Hardiman
This book is the third of a three-volume set on the innate mind. It provides an assessment of nativist thought and definitive reference point for future inquiry. Nativists have long been interested in a variety of foundational topics relating to the study of cognitive development and the historical opposition between nativism and empiricism. Among the issues here are questions about what it is for something to be innate in the first place; how innateness is related to such things as heritability, genetic information, and theories of cognitive development; the status of arguments both for and against nativism; and how best to understand the role of genes in development and inheritance. These issues are all explored in one way or another in this book. But the book also looks to the future. Alongside state-of-the-art discussions of such established nativist concerns as language, number, spatial cognition, and social cognition, this book examines nativist work in a variety of areas where detailed nativist exploration is relatively new, including cultural learning, creativity, economic choice, culture, and morality. The expansion of nativist theorizing into all these new areas shows both the power and the promise of nativist approaches, and points the way to the future.
'Almost 150 years after their major works were published Darwin and Marx stand alone as the premier theorists of the evolution of complex living systems. Hodgson's unique contribution in these essays is to capture the spirit of these two great thinkers in their ability to see universal principles in particular contextual frameworks. Using an evolutionary and institutional approach to examine a variety of theoretical issues Hodgson avoids both the postmodern disease of extreme relativism and the rigidity of insisting on "one true religion" for economic theory. This book is a major contribution to the current revolution in economic theory.' - John M. Gowdy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, US. Economics in the Shadows of Darwin and Marx examines the legacies of these two giants of thought for the social sciences in the twenty-first century.
Contingent valuation method (CVM) surveys have become a popular way of placing a monetary value on various aspects of the environment with the aim of determining whether the benefits of a proposed project outweighs the costs. Litigation over natural resource damages has used CVM results as evidence of the size of compensation required. However, despite attempts to set down definitive rules, survey redesign and data manipulation fail to address some key issues raised by CVM studies. Among these is evidence that modified lexicographic preferences, where the substitutability of environmental quality with other commodities is rejected, can be common. Human value formation with respect to the environment combines ethical and economic aspects in a more complex way than most economists have assumed. This paper reports new evidence confirming the influence of ethical beliefs about rights for endangered species in determining willingness to pay (WTP) responses to a CVM survey. One subsample of those holding rights are found to protest against payment, while others bid positively and have a significant impact on WTP. Less than half the total sample held ethical motives in accord with economic theory. Policies and instruments based upon the application of neoclassical utility theory will then be neither optimal nor provide the socially desired outcome.
The currently accepted theory of collective action presumes that individuals are helplessly trapped in social dilemmas. This has led to a form of policy analysis that presumes external authorities must solve all collective-action problems. The presumed universal need for externally implemented incentives is based, however, on a single model of rational behavior. This model has been shown to be an inadequate foundation to explain extensive empirical findings from the field and the experimental laboratory related to nonmarket settings. Thus, it is necessary to adopt a broader theory of human behavior that posits multiple types of individuals – including rational egoists as well as conditional cooperators – and examines how the contexts of collective action affect the mix of individuals involved. I will briefly review the empirical evidence related to intrinsic motivations and how external incentives may crowd out or crowd in behaviors that are based on intrinsic preferences. I then discuss the delicate problem of designing institutions that enhance citizenship rather than crowding it out. The penchant for neat, orderly hierarchical systems needs to be replaced with a recognition that complex, polycentric systems are needed to cope effectively with complex problems of modern life and to give all citizens a more effective role in the governance of democratic societies.
The Motivation Crowding Effect suggests that external intervention via monetary incentives or punishments may undermine, and under different identifiable conditions strengthen, intrinsic motivation. As of today, the theoretical possibility of motivation crowding has been the main subject of discussion among economists. This study demonstrates that the effect is also of empirical relevance. There exist a large number of studies, offering empirical evidence in support of the existence of crowding–out and crowding–in. The study is based on circumstantial evidence, laboratory studies by both psychologists and economists, as well as field research by econometric studies. The pieces of evidence presented refer to a wide variety of areas of the economy and society and have been collected for many different countries and periods of time. Crowding effects thus are an empirically relevant phenomenon, which can, in specific cases, even dominate the traditional relative price effect.
This paper investigates what a respondent is thinking when answering a willingness-to-pay question in a contingent valuation, using a "think aloud" technique from psychology called verbal protocol analysis. The willingness-to-pay responses we observed seem to be constructed from a variety of considerations, including an obligation to pay a fair share of the cost of the solution and signaling concern for a larger set of environmental issues. The finding that respondents seem to construct their values at the time they are asked, rather than reporting a more well-defined value, is seen as consistent with over two decades of research on the psychology of decision making. Potential uses of verbal protocols in contingent valuation studies are also discussed.
Economic and psychological literature mentions three conditions under which the crowding-out effect of pro-social behaviour is likely to occur and to crowd out citizens' moral obligations to behave co-operatively. I use a framed field experiment on joint extraction from a common-pool resource (CPR) where the crowding-out effect has already been reported before in combination with the trust game carried out in farming communities of Namibia and South Africa to replicate these conditions. The research design and the cross-cultural setting enable to explicitly control for these effects. The results of the experiments support that the crowding-out effect depends on: - The nature of the external intervention (controlling vs. supportive external intervention) - The degree of participants self-determination (high vs. low self-determination in the group) - A society's norms of trust and reciprocity (high vs. low trust within the society) The results imply that outside regulations aiming to conserve natural resources risk worsening the situation when neglecting democratic legitimization as well as local community norms.
A genetical mathematical model is described which allows for interactions between relatives on one another's fitness. Making use of Wright's Coefficient of Relationship as the measure of the proportion of replica genes in a relative, a quantity is found which incorporates the maximizing property of Darwinian fitness. This quantity is named “inclusive fitness”. Species following the model should tend to evolve behaviour such that each organism appears to be attempting to maximize its inclusive fitness. This implies a limited restraint on selfish competitive behaviour and possibility of limited self-sacrifices.
Special cases of the model are used to show (a) that selection in the social situations newly covered tends to be slower than classical selection, (b) how in populations of rather non-dispersive organisms the model may apply to genes affecting dispersion, and (c) how it may apply approximately to competition between relatives, for example, within sibships. Some artificialities of the model are discussed.
According to the advocates of a "Generalized Darwinism" (GD), the three core Darwinian principles of variation, selection and retention (or inheritance) can be used as a general framework for the development of theories explaining evolutionary processes in the socioeconomic domain. Even though these are originally biological terms, GD argues that they can be re-defined in such a way as to abstract from biological particulars. We argue that this approach does not only risk to misguide positive theory development, but that it may also impede the construction of a coherent evolutionary approach to "policy implications". This is shown with respect to the positive, instrumental and normative theories such an approach is supposed to be based upon.
In constructing improved models of human behavior, both experimental and behavioral economists have increasingly turned to evolutionary theory for insights into human psychology and preferences. Unfortunately, the existing genetic evolutionary approaches can explain neither the degree of prosociality (altruism and altruistic punishment) observed in humans, nor the patterns of variation in these behaviors across different behavioral domains and social groups. Ongoing misunderstandings about why certain models work, what they predict, and what the place is of “group selection” in evolutionary theory have hampered the use of insights from biology and anthropology. This paper clarifies some of these issues and proposes an approach to the evolution of prosociality rooted in the interaction between cultural and genetic transmission. I explain how, in contrast to non-cultural species, the details of our evolved cultural learning capacities (e.g., imitative abilities) create the conditions for the cultural evolution of prosociality. By producing multiple behavioral equilibria, including group-beneficial equilibria, cultural evolution endogenously generates a mechanism of equilibrium selection that can favor prosociality. Finally, in the novel social environments left in the wake of these cultural evolutionary processes, natural selection is likely to favor prosocial genes that would not be expected in a purely genetic approach.