Human nature: An economic perspective

Daedalus

Volumn 133, Issue 4, 2004, Pages 67-75

  Smith, Vernon L ^a  

^a GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 34748915471     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/0011526042365528     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. A. Hayek, "Adam Smith (1723 -1790): His Message in Today's Language," in The Trend ofEconomic Thinking: Essays on Political Economists and Economic History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 120.
2. See Bernard Mandeville's poem, "The Grumbling Hive: or Knaves Turned Honest" (1705), quoted in Hayek, "Adam Smith," 82.
3. Gerald W. Scully, "The Institutional Framework and Economic Development," Journal of Political Economy 96 (3) (1988): 652 - 662.
4. Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. R. H.Campbell and A. S. Skinner (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1981), 20. Thus, when Smith uses the
5. The more common, inappropriate, interpretation is illustrated in the following quotation from Joseph Stiglitz ("Information and the Change in the Paradigm in Economics," in Les Prix Nobel, The Nobel Prizes 2001 [Stockholm: The Nobel Foundation, 2002], 472): "The argument of Adam Smith ⋯ that free markets led to efficient outcomes, 'as if by an invisible hand,'has played a central role in these [information economics] debates. The set of ideasthat I will present here undermines Smith's theory and view of government that rested on it.They have suggested that the reason that the hand may be invisible is that it is simply not there-or at least that it is palsied."
6. Douglass C. North, Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: Norton, 1981).
7. F. A. Hayek, Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 85.
8. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (London: Penguin Classics, 1985), vol. 2, 235.
9. F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1, Rides and Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 81.
10. Samuel Noah Kramer, History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Man's Recorded History (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), 51-59, 116-131.
11. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, 85, 167, 173 -174.
12. For a thoughtful examination and critique of Hayek's arguments, see Ronald Hamowy, "F. A. Hayek and the Common Law," Cato Journal 23 (2) (Fall 2003): 241 - 264.
13. Peter Freuchen, Book of the Eskimos (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1961), 53-54.
14. Sometimes two-person interactions similar to this are conducted 'double blind,' meaning that the experimenter can never know who made what decisions. Introducing double-blind procedures is a way of changing social distance by removing the experimenter and all others from knowledge of the subjects' decisions.
15. Kevin A. McCabe, Mary Rigdon, and Vernon L. Smith, "Positive Reciprocity and Intentions in Trust Games," Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 52 (October 2003): 267-275.
16. Kevin A. McCabe and Vernon L. Smith, "A Comparison of Naïve and Sophisticated SubjectBehavior with Game Theoretic Predictions," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 97 (7) (2000): 3777-3781.
17. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1976), 225. Notice that Smith is talking about reciprocity, but without using this word from our time. Then he proceeds to talk about reputation formation and positive cultural responses.
18. Vernon L. Smith, Papers in Experimental Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
19. Arlington Williams, Vernon L. Smith, and John O. Ledyard, "Simultaneous Trading in Two Competitive Markets," manuscript (Bloomington: Indiana University Department of Economics,1986).
20. Arlington Williams, Vernon L. Smith, John O. Ledyard, and Steven Gjerstad, "Concurrent Trading in Two Experimental Markets with Demand Interdependence," Journal of Economic Theory 16 (2000): 511-528.
21. Charles Plott, "Equilibrium, Equilibration, Information and Multiple Markets: From Basic Science to Institutional Design," Nobel Symposium, "Behavioral and Experimental Economics," Grand Hotel Saltsjobaden, December 4-6, 2001. The effects of using different trad-ing institutions have also been extensively explored.
22. see Smith, Papers in Experimental Economics.
23. See Vernon L. Smith, "The Two Faces of Adam Smith," Southern Economic Association Distinguished Guest Lecture, Southern Economic Journal 65 (1) (July 1998): 1 -19.
24. F. A. Hayek, The Fatal Conceit (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 18. The italics are Hayek's.