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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
International Trade, Factor Mobility And The Persistence Of Cultural-Institutional Diversity, Marianna Belloc, Samuel Bowles
International Trade, Factor Mobility And The Persistence Of Cultural-Institutional Diversity, Marianna Belloc, Samuel Bowles
Samuel Bowles
Cultural and institutional differences among nations may result in differences in the ratios of marginal costs of goods in autarchy and thus be the basis of specialization and comparative advantage, as long as these differences are not eliminated by trade. We provide an evolutionary model of endogenous preferences and institutions under autarchy, trade and factor mobility in which multiple asymptotically stable cultural-institutional conventions may exist, among which transitions may occur as a result of decentralized and un-coordinated actions of employers or employees. We show that: i) specialization and trade may arise and enhance welfare even when the countries are identical …
Social Preferences And Public Economics: Mechanism Design When Social Preferences Depend On Incentives, Samuel Bowles, Sung-Ha Hwang
Social Preferences And Public Economics: Mechanism Design When Social Preferences Depend On Incentives, Samuel Bowles, Sung-Ha Hwang
Samuel Bowles
Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investigate the design of optimal incentives to contribute to a public good under these conditions. We identify cases in which a sophisticated planner cognizant of these non-additive effects would make either more or less use …