Dishonesty: From parents to children

Acts of dishonesty permeate life. Understanding their origins, and what mechanisms help to attenuate such acts is an underexplored area of research. This study takes an economic approach to explore the propensity of individuals to act dishonestly across different contexts. We conduct an experiment that includes both parents and their young children as subjects, exploring the roles of moral cost and scrutiny on dishonest behavior. We find that the highest level of dishonesty occurs in settings where the parent acts alone and the dishonest act benefits the child. In this spirit, there is also an interesting, quite different, effect of children on parents’ behavior: parents act more honestly under the scrutiny of daughters than under the scrutiny of sons. This finding sheds new light on the origins of the widely documented gender differences in cheating behavior observed among adults, where a typical result is that females are more honest than males.     

Father Knows Best: Using Adam Smith to Teach Transactions Costs

Adam Smith's moral philosophy can be used to introduce economics students to the important idea of transactions costs. The author provides a brief background in this article to Smith's moral philosophy and connects it to the costs of transacting in a way that fits easily into the standard principles of microeconomics classroom. By doing so, instructors can also demonstrate to students that there are connections between ethical behavior and market outcomes.     

Social preferences and moral biases

An emerging consensus in economics is that three motives are at work in strategic decisions: distributive preferences, reciprocal preferences and self-interest. An important obstacle, however, has been moral biases: distortions created by self-interest can obscure our measures of social preferences. This paper describes a simple experiment to address this. We compare the decisions of implicated “stakeholders” with those of impartial “spectators.” We find that stakeholders are less inclined to respond to the generosity of others than are spectators. We also clarify a result in previous research [e.g., Offerman, T., 2002. Hurting hurts more than helping helps. European Economic Review 46, 1423–1437] that stakeholders punish unkindness more than they reward kindness. We find that this asymmetry in reciprocity has two sources: an asymmetry in the underlying preference that even impartial spectators display and a moral bias; stakeholders punish more and reward less than spectators. In sum, we find that all three motives have important and significant effects on final allocations.     

An experimental study of prosocial motivation among criminals

The fact that criminal behavior typically has negative consequences for others provides a compelling reason to think that criminals lack prosocial motivation. This paper reports the results from two dictator game experiments designed to study the prosocial motivation of criminals. In a lab experiment involving prisoners, we find a striking similarity in the prosocial behavior of criminals and non-criminals, both when they interact with criminals and when they interact with non-criminals. Similarly, in an Internet experiment on a large sample from the general population, we find no difference in the prosocial behavior of individuals with and without a criminal record. We argue that our findings provide evidence of criminals being as prosocially motivated as non-criminals in an important type of distributive situations.     

Confucian economics: how is Chinese thinking different?

The Chinese have their economics. Not yet acknowledged, it is contained in the Confucian thought. Called by me ‘Confucian economics’, it sharply differs from the Western ‘Liberal economics’. Individuals seek posterity through offspring, rather than ‘instant gratification’. Resources are not seen as scarce but as abundant. Rather than take resources from others, people work to make a living. The work ethics and not the profit margin is a key motive. Individuals work not for themselves but for their family. The family is a source of moral sentiment, understood as responsibility for others. This is why the main institution is family and not market. To Confucians, the key principle is equality, which precedes efficiency. Inequality upsets ‘social peace’, as a precondition for growth. Built on Liberal principles, the Western capitalist system is a market one. The Chinese system, which I call ‘Confucian system’, is also market-based. The former is a ‘free market’ animated by individuals, the latter is a ‘familial market’ built around households. Both approaches advocate ‘minimal state’, but for Liberals the state is a ‘night watchman’ to ensure the security of resources, while for Confucians, the state is a moral guide to enable social harmony. As a theory, Confucian economics is a form of ethics and the Liberal is not. China has never abandoned Confucianism. The recent reforms are not about rolling back the Soviet model to establish a capitalist system. Relying on Confucian economics, China is reviving Confucian system. Paradoxically, the ancient Confucian economics has become the engine of China’s modernity. This is a key reason for China’s ‘longest boom’. To extend it, China needs to refocus its policies from ‘capital formation’ to the ‘moral cultivation’, along the Confucian principles.     

当代大学生道德情感对道德行为的影响及应对措施

道德情感与道德行为相互作用、密不可分。道德情感是道德行为与道德认识之间的桥梁;道德情感的发展过程本身就是一种道德行为;道德情感对道德行为具有定向、激励和强化的功能。随着社会的发展,当代大学生的思想道德状况发生了变化,他们的道德情感总体上是积极向上的,但也有一些令人担忧的方面,如道德情感空洞、薄弱、不稳定等。为此,大学生自身应该加强正确世界观、人生观和价值观的培养;学校、家庭和社会应该为大学生营造出良好的道德环境,引导大学生形成优秀的道德情感,促进道德行为的发生。     

论探究可持续发展战略伦理基础的哲学依据

社会发展不仅是受利益驱动规律作用的纯自然历史进程,也是内含着道德价值意蕴的社会历史进程。可持续发展战略的实现不仅需要相关制度、政策的安排,更重要的是需要与之相适应的伦理基础,运用道德的约束力,依靠内在信念和社会舆论的作用,以人类发自于内心的自觉行为来保证人与环境的共同协调发展。可持续发展战略的伦理基础是其充满生机和活力的精神源泉。     

Contractual preferences and moral biases: social identity and procedural fairness in the exclusion game experiment

Many people may suffer from moral biases when making allocation decisions having consequences to others. This means that some factors hinder people from finding, or constructing, their true social preferences in those situations. As a counterforce to this, numerous devices of moral priming have evolved—such as parenting, formal education as well as various formal and informal contracting procedures. This paper focuses on the influences of social identity and the perceived fairness of contracting procedures on subjects’ behaviour in situations of allocation decisions. The analysis of experimental data suggest, first, that males are less likely than females to engage in other-regarding behaviour in a pre-agreement situation where two active players divide an endowment among themselves and a third, passive, player. However, this difference disappeared after the joint contract of the rule of dividing the endowment was made. Second, it was found that students of economics are less likely than other students to behave in an other-regarding way before the contract; this difference remained also in decisions after the contract was made. Finally, both a random selection mechanism and a majority voting mechanism were rated fair by the majority of the subjects. However, the data suggests that fairness ratings are positively associated with compliant behavior only in the case of the majority voting mechanism.     

The institutional determinants of self-governance: a comment on Edward Stringham’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Private Governance</Emphasis>

Many pages would be require to discuss Private Governance’s important contributions, so I focus on a relatively minor flaw: chapter 9 on moral beliefs is inconsistent with Stringham’s general treatment of private governance institutions as endogenous. Moral beliefs are essentially depicted as unchanging, but they actually are endogenous too. Individuals can pursue wealth through cooperative interaction, which requires trust, creating incentives to develop beliefs that encourage ethical and benevolent behavior. Alternatively wealth can be taken from others through force and/or guile. Beliefs to facilitate involuntary transfers also are institutionalized. For instance, in order to benefit from coercive wealth transfers “in good conscience,” recipients have incentives to see their victims as enemies to justify a moral “right” to transfers. Changing moral beliefs is costly, however, so they tend to be fixed in the short term. Once it becomes apparent that existing beliefs significantly conflict with an individual’s interests, she is forced to question those beliefs. The impetus for rationalizing new beliefs arises. The direction of evolution can be predicted with a rational decision-making model. To illustrate the endogeneity of moral beliefs, three institutional settings are examined: “dignity culture,” “honor culture,” and “victimhood culture”.     

巨灾风险下的投保行为 ——基于实验理论的研究

中国尚无巨灾保险市场,研究人们在巨灾风险下的投保行为对巨灾保险市场的建立与发展都具有重要的意义。本文以地震风险为例,运用实验经济学的方法,探讨了个体面对巨灾风险时的投保行为与相关理论问题。研究结果表明,人们的投保决策受其对风险概率认知的影响较小,知道清晰的风险概率甚至会降低投保率;在实验中引入仿真信息,将诱导被试投保;而过往受灾经历影响较大,且这种影响并不一定需要亲身经历才能形成,知晓他人遭受灾难也能唤起人们的投保意识。通过扩展传统的实验理论,实验室实验被应用到了这种因难以控制变量而研究较少的领域,并发现了投保行为的某些特征。     

An experimental analysis of moral self-regulation

This article examines the validity of the moral self-regulation hypothesis in a laboratory setting. The experiment is comprised of a public good game preceded or followed by a matrix task. The data show that the recall of an immoral action (cheating in the matrix task) motivates the individual to do morally right thing (contributing to group account) and the recall of a moral action (contributing to group account) motivates the individual to act out self-interest (cheating in the matrix task). Both moral licensing and moral cleansing hypotheses are confirmed by the results of the experiment. Additionally, the findings indicate that the subjects who had been given a chance to cheat ‘at first’ allocated more funds to the group account; and the subjects who had been given a chance to voluntarily contribute ‘at first’ cheated more in the matrix task.     

On social norms and beliefs: A model of manager environmental behavior

A prevailing view in the literature states that social sanctions can support, in equilibrium, high levels of obedience to a costly norm. The reason is that social disapproval and stigmatization faced by the disobedient are highest when disobedience is the exception rather than the rule in society. In contrast, the Bayesian model introduced here shows that, imperfect information causes the expected social sanction to be lowest precisely when obedience is more common. This, amongst other findings, draws a distinct line between social and moral norms, both of which may depend on others’ behavior but not on action observability. The implications of the use of non-Bayesian belief formation rules by society, namely a representativeness rule (overweighting the signals) and conservativism (overweighting the prior), for payoff functions and equilibria are explored.     

诚信视角下的税收伦理问题探讨

诚信在社会主义新时期税收中的作用越来越凸显,日益引起了人们的关注和重视。在市场经济条件下,诚信是税收的保障,税收伦理与诚信相互依存,这种关系为我国税收创造了良好的环境。但非诚信纳税问题不可忽视,针对非诚信纳税,提倡诚信光荣的纳税美德、培育以企业为核心的税收规范．为形成制度化纳税文化体系提供对策和依据。     

Ethics and social capital for global well-being

Social capital is associated with considerable benefits for individuals and communities. Because some social capital is non-excludable, people may be disinclined to undertake activities that will create it. This is especially likely when the norm of self-interest is prominent. In addition, given the birds of a feather phenomenon, social capital appears to thrive in homogenous networks, and to languish in the face of diversity. I argue that social capital meets the criteria of a moral concept and that treating it as such can address these vulnerabilities. In particular, as a moral principle, social capital would be more demanding than mere self-interest and the moral requirement of universality would trigger a duty to act impartially with respect to networks. Since market interactions can create social capital, and social capital is a moral good, market interactions are in part constitutive of the good. I also argue that global social capital is important for both global well-being and sustainable globalization. Given the benefits of social capital, including it in the choice architecture as a moral principle will be worth the investment.     

试论大学生与诚信道德

大学生是民族的希望、祖国的未来,大学生教育也是公民道德建设“诚信”道德教育的重中之重,有效地帮助他们自觉树立诚信意识,提高他们的道德素质,把他们培养成为中国特色社会主义事业的合格建设者和接班人,是目前亟待解决的一个问题。     

Rhetoric and analogies

The art of rhetoric may be defined as changing other people's minds (opinions, beliefs) without providing them new information. One technique heavily used by rhetoric employs analogies. Using analogies, one may draw the listener's attention to similarities between cases and to re-organize existing information in a way that highlights certain regularities. In this paper we offer two models of analogies, discuss their theoretical equivalence, and show that finding good analogies is a computationally hard problem.     

Problems of Emergency Arbitration

This paper explores ethical burdens facing the economics profession which are associated with epistemic features of economic practice. Economists exert power over those they purport to serve by virtue of epistemic asymmetry between themselves and others, i.e., the intellectual monopoly they enjoy over a vitally important body of knowledge. But they also face the problem of epistemic insufficiency, which implies that they may do substantial harm as they try to do good. The paper explores the ethical entailments of the epistemic features of economics, and argues that managing the ethical challenges requires a new field of inquiry, the field of professional economic ethics, and not just a code of conduct.     

Judgment: Balancing Principle and Policy

Judgment is an element of decision-making that is of critical importance to both ethics and economics but remains underappreciated in both. In this paper, I describe one conception of moral judgment, drawn from the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant and the legal philosophy of Ronald Dworkin, in which an agent weighs and balances the various moral duties and principles relevant to a choice situation in a way that maintains the integrity of her moral character. After explaining the foundations and uses of judgment in ethics, I discuss its importance to two areas of economic modeling, individual choice and policy-making, both of which can be enhanced by incorporating judgment alongside more basic ethical motivations and concerns.     

The evolution of cooperative hierarchies through natural selection processes

According to a bioeconomic model called skew selection, individuals form cooperative hierarchies when coping with high risk environments that include predators and cycles of scarce resources. This paper reports a study that used agent-based computer simulations to experimentally test the predictions of skew selection. Results of the experiment showed that successful face-to-face transaction strategies varied with environmental risks. Risks involving resource scarcity favored clustering and stealing. Risks involving predators favored clustering and hoarding. A combination of risks involving resource scarcity and predators favored clustering and sharing. Wealthy donors gained safety-in-numbers to protect them from predators; at the same time, marginal recipients gained resources to protect them from starving. In summary, our findings show that even though natural selection is not a moral process, it can produce moral behavior.