Behavioral ethics meets natural justice

Politics, Philosophy & Economics

Volumn 5, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 5-32

  Gintis, Herbert ^a  

^a CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY   (Hungary)

Author keywords

ethics; evolutionary game theory; folk theorem; justice

Indexed keywords

EID: 34247848867     PISSN: 1470594X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1470594X06060617     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. Herbert Gintis, Game Theory Evolving (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000).
2. ‘What can be said can be said clearly; what one cannot speak about, one should be silent about.’
3. Traditional philosophical ethicists, says Binmore, ‘have no more access to some noumenal world of moral absolutes than the boy who delivers the newspapers’. See Ken Binmore, Natural Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 1.
4. ‘Kant never provides a genuine defense of his claims. his categorical imperative is simply a grandiloquent rendering of folk wisdom.’ See Binmore, Natural Justice, p. ix.
5. Edward O. Wilson, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975).
6. Throughout human history, up to about 10,000 years ago with the emergence of sedentary agriculture and private property, there was no institutional means by which a minority could impose rules on the majority, so, as Binmore notes, fairness probably flourished, as is the case in virtually every contemporary hunter-gatherer group.
7. See Binmore, Natural Justice, Section 4.6.
8. Binmore, Natural Justice, p. 75.
9. Herbert Gintis, ‘Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 206 (2000): 169-79; Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernest Fehr (eds) Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005).
10. Ken Binmore, Game Theory and the Social Contract: Playing Fair (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994); Ken Binmore, Game Theory and the Social Contract: Just Playing (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998).
11. Drew Fudenberg and Eric Maskin, ‘The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting or with Incomplete Information’, Econometrica 54 (1986): 533-54; Drew Fudenberg, David K. Levine and Eric Maskin, ‘The Folk Theorem with Imperfect Public Information’, Econometrica 62 (1994): 997-1039.
12. Reinhard Selten, ‘A Note on Evolutionarily Stable Strategies in Asymmetric Animal Conflicts’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 84 (1980): 93-101.
13. Gintis, ‘Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality’, pp. 169–79; Hillard Kaplan and Michael Gurven, ‘The Natural History of Human Food Sharing and Cooperation: A Review and a New Multi-Individual Approach to the Negotiation of Norms’, in Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, edited by Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004); Arthur Robson and Hillard Kaplan, ‘The Evolution of Human Life Expectancy and Intelligence in Hunter-Gatherer Economies’, American Economic Review 93 (2003): 150-69.
14. David Laibson, ‘Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 112 (1997): 443-77.
15. Gintis, Game Theory Evolving.
16. An exception is workers striking for a period of time to protest their employer's violation of an agreed-upon work rule. In this example, however, the inefficiency of trigger strategies is largely absent, since we have in effect a two-player game between the employer and the workers’ union.
17. Fudenberg and Maskin, ‘The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting or with Incomplete Information’, pp. 533–54.
18. It is frequently suggested that the case of ‘insiders’ punishing their members for fraternizing with ‘outsiders’ is a case of second-order punishment. But, in an insider-outsider situation, the outsiders are not being punished - they are simply members of other groups. If the norm of a group is to refrain from fraternizing with members of other groups, defectors from this norm may be punished. But this is clearly a case of first-order punishment. Second-order punishment, in this case, would be to punish those who refuse to punish those who fraternize with outsiders.
19. Fudenberg and Maskin, ‘The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting or with Incomplete Information’, pp. 533–54.
20. Dilip Abreu, David Pearce and Ennio Stacchetti, ‘Toward a Theory of Discounted Repeated Games with Imperfect Monitoring’, Econometrica 58 (1990): 1041-63; Fudenberg, Levine and Maskin, ‘The Folk Theorem with Imperfect Public Information’, pp. 997–1039.
21. Robert Sugden, The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986); Robert Boyd, ‘Mistakes Allow Evolutionary Stability in the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma Game’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 136 (1989): 47-56.
22. See Michihiro Kandori, ‘Introduction to Repeated Games with Private Monitoring’, Journal of Economic Theory 102 (2002): 1-15 for a technical overview. Important contributions to this research agenda include Tadashi Sekiguchi, ‘Efficiency in Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with Private Monitoring’, Journal of Economic Theory 76 (1997): 345-61; Michele Piccione, ‘The Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with Imperfect Private Monitoring’, Journal of Economic Theory 102 (2002): 70-83; Jeffrey C. Ely and Juuso Välimäki, ‘A Robust Folk Theorem for the Prisoner's Dilemma’, Journal of Economic Theory 102 (2002): 84-105; V. Bhaskar and Ichiro Obara, ‘Communication in the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with Private Monitoring’, Journal of Economic Theory 102 (2002): 40-69; Elchanan Ben-Porath and Michael Kahneman, ‘Communication in Repeated Games with Private Monitoring’, Journal of Economic Theory 70 (1996): 281-97.
23. Bhaskar and Obara, ‘Communication in the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with Private Monitoring’, pp. 40–69.
24. For details of the replicator dynamic, see P. Taylor and L. Jonker, ‘Evolutionarily Stable Strategies and Game Dynamics’, Mathematical Biosciences 40 (1978): 145-56; Gintis, Game Theory Evolving.
25. David M. Kreps, A Course in Microeconomic Theory (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).
26. James S. Coleman, Foundations of Social Theory (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1990); Peter Kollock, ‘Transforming Social Dilemmas: Group Identity and Cooperation’, in Modeling Rational and Moral Agents, edited by Peter Danielson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997); Michael Hechter and Satoshi Kanazawa, ‘Sociological Rational Choice’, Annual Review of Sociology 23 (1997): 199-214.
27. James Andreoni and John H. Miller, ‘Giving According to GARP: An Experimental Test of the Consistency of Preferences for Altruism’, Econometrica 70 (2002): 737-53.
28. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, ‘Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 106 (1981): 1039-61; Toko Kiyonari, Shigehito Tanida and Toshio Yamagishi, ‘Social Exchange and Reciprocity: Confusion or a Heuristic?’, Evolution and Human Behavior 21 (2000): 411-27.
29. Ernst Fehr, Simon Gächter and Georg Kirchsteiger, ‘Reciprocity as a Contract Enforcement Device: Experimental Evidence’, Econometrica 65 (1997): 833-60.
30. Gintis, ‘Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality’, pp. 169–79.
31. For other such experiments, see Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr, ‘Explaining Altruistic Behavior in Humans’, Evolution and Human Behavior 24 (2003): 153-72.
32. Ernst Fehr, Georg Kirchsteiger and Arno Riedl, ‘Does Fairness Prevent Market Clearing?’ Quarterly Journal of Economics 108 (1993): 437-59; Ernst Fehr, Georg Kirchsteiger and Arno Riedl, ‘Gift Exchange and Reciprocity in Competitive Experimental Markets’, European Economic Review 42 (1998): 1-34.
33. See George Homans, Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1961); Peter Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (New York: John Wiley, 1964); George A. Akerlof, ‘Labor Contracts as Partial Gift Exchange’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 97 (1982): 543-69.
34. Ernst Fehr and Urs Fischbacher, ‘Why Social Preferences Matter’, presented at the Nobel Symposium on Behavioral and Experimental Economics (Stockholm, 2001); Colin Camerer, Behavioral Game Theory: Experiments in Strategic Interaction (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003).
35. Kiyonari, Tanida and Yamagishi, ‘Social Exchange and Reciprocity: Confusion or a Heuristic?’, pp. 411–27.
36. Richard Thaler, ‘Anomalies: The Ultimatum Game’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 2 (1988): 195-206.
37. Alvin E. Roth, Vesna Prasnikar, Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara and Shmuel Zamir, ‘Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study’, American Economic Review 81 (1991): 1068-95; Colin Camerer and Richard Thaler, ‘Ultimatums, Dictators, and Manners’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9 (1995): 209-19.
38. Sally Blount, ‘When Social Outcomes Aren't Fair: The Effect of Causal Attributions on Preferences’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 63 (1995): 131-44.
39. Roth, Prasnikar, Okuno-Fujiwara and Zamir, ‘Bargaining and Market Behavior in Jerusalem, Ljubljana, Pittsburgh, and Tokyo: An Experimental Study’, pp. 1068–95; Elizabeth Hoffman, Kevin McCabe and Vernon L. Smith, ‘On Expectations and the Monetary Stakes in Ultimatum Games’, International Journal of Game Theory (1994): 289-302; Paul G. Straub and J. Keith Murnighan, ‘An Experimental Investigation of the Ultimatum Game: Common Knowledge, Fairness, Expectations, and Lowest Acceptable Offers’, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 27 (1995): 345-64; Lisa A. Cameron, ‘Raising the Stakes in the Ultimatum Game: Experimental Evidence from Indonesia’, Economic Inquiry 37 (1999): 47-59.
40. Robert Slonim and Alvin E. Roth, ‘Learning in High Stakes Ultimatum Games: An Experiment in the Slovak Republic’, Econometrica 66 (1998): 569-96.
41. Binmore, Natural Justice, p. 83.
42. Claudia Keser and Frans van Winden, ‘Conditional Cooperation and Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics 102 (2000): 23-39.
43. Slonim and Roth, ‘Learning in High Stakes Ultimatum Games: An Experiment in the Slovak Republic’, pp. 569–96.
44. Binmore, Natural Justice, p. 84.
45. Herbert Gintis, ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism: Genes, Culture, and the Internalization of Norms’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 220 (2003): 407-18; Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, ‘The Origins of Human Cooperation’, in The Genetic and Cultural Origins of Cooperation, edited by Peter Hammerstein (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
46. Emile Durkheim, Suicide: A Study in Sociology (New York: Free Press, 1951); Joan E. Grusec and Leon Kuczynski, Parenting and Children's Internalization of Values: A Handbook of Contemporary Theory (New York: Wiley, 1997).
47. Bowles and Gintis, ‘The Origins of Human Cooperation’.
48. William D. Hamilton, ‘The Evolution of Altruistic Behavior’, American Naturalist 96 (1963): 354-6; Scott A. Boorman and Paul Levitt, The Genetics of Altruism (New York: Academic Press, 1980); John Maynard Smith, ‘Group Selection’, Quarterly Review of Biology 51 (1976): 277-83.
49. David Sloan Wilson, The Natural Selection of Populations and Communities (Menlo Park, CA: Benjamin Cummings, 1980).
50. Gintis, ‘The Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism: Genes, Culture, and the Internalization of Norms’, pp. 407–18.
51. George F. Loewenstein, ‘Out of Control: Visceral Influences on Behavior’, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 65 (1996): 272-92; Laibson, ‘Golden Eggs and Hyperbolic Discounting’, pp. 443–77.
52. A.B. Atkinson, The Economic Consequences of Rolling Back the Welfare State (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999).
53. John B. Williamson, ‘Beliefs about the Motivation of the Poor and Attitudes Toward Poverty Policy’, Social Problems 21 (1974): 734-47; Hugh Heclo, ‘The Political Foundations of Antipoverty Policy’, in Fighting Poverty: What Works and What Doesn't, edited by Sheldon H. Danziger and Daniel H. Weinberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), pp. 312–41; Steve Farkas and Jean Robinson, The Values we Live By: What Americans Want from Welfare Reform (New York: Public Agenda, 1996); Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1999); David Miller, Principles of Social Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
54. Christina M. Fong, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis, ‘Reciprocity and the Welfare State’, in Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: On the Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life, edited by Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd and Ernst Fehr (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
55. Heclo, ‘The Political Foundations of Antipoverty Policy’, pp. 312–41.
56. Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
57. Heclo, ‘The Political Foundations of Antipoverty Policy’, pp. 312–41; Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare; Page and Shapiro, The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences.