Download or read book Generating Predictability written by Christoph Engel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-11-17 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Human behaviour is infinitely complex, the result of thousands of interactions between predispositions, external factors and physical and cognitive processes. It is also highly unpredictable, which makes meaningful social engagement difficult without the aid of some external framework such as that offered by an institution. Both formal and informal institutions can provide the element of predictability necessary for successful, complex interactions, a factor which is often overlooked by institutional analysts and designers. Drawing on a wide range of disciplines including psychology, economics, and sociological and political studies, this book develops a coherent and accessible theory for explaining the unpredictability of individual behaviour. The author then highlights the danger of institutional reforms undermining the very capacity to generate predictability which is so central to their success. This book will appeal to academics, researchers and professionals in many fields including management studies, behavioural economics and the new, interdisciplinary field of institutional design.

Download or read book Revisiting the Contracts Scholarship of Stewart Macaulay written by Jean Braucher and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-14 with total page 466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book contains the papers prepared for a conference held at the Wisconsin Law School in 2011 to honour the work of Stewart Macaulay, one of the most famous contracts scholars of his generation. Macaulay has been writing about contracts and contract law for over 50 years; the 1960s were particularly productive years for him, when he introduced many novel ideas into the scholarly world. Macaulay's foundational work for what is now called relational contract theory was published during this period. Macaulay is also known for his use of empirical research and interdisciplinary theories to illuminate our knowledge of contracting practices. The papers in this volume reflect, in diverse ways, on the subsequent influence and the contemporary relevance of Macaulay's work. All the contributors are important contracts scholars in their own right: David Campbell and John Wightman from the UK, Brian Bix, Jay Feinman, Robert Gordon, Claire Hill, Charles Knapp, Ethan Leib, Deborah Post, Edward Rubin, Carol Sanger, Robert Scott, Gordon Smith, Josh Whitford (with Li-Wen Lin) and William Woodward from the USA. The volume also reproduces Macaulay's most cited paper, 'Non-Contractual Relations in Business', and excerpts from two other important papers of his, 'Private Legislation and the Duty to Read-Business Run by IBM Machine, the Law of Contracts and Credit Cards', and 'The Real and The Paper Deal: Empirical Pictures of Relationships, Complexity and the Urge for Transparent Simple Rules'.

Download or read book Social Norms Bounded Rationality and Optimal Contracts written by Suren Basov and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book investigates the ways in which social norms and bounded rationality shape different contracts in the real world. It brings into focus existing research into optimal contracts, draws important lessons from that research, and outlines prospects for future investigation. Bounded rationality has acknowledged effects on the power of incentive provisions, such as deviations from sufficient statistic theorem, the power of optimal incentives, and the effects of optimal contracts in multicultural environments. The introduction of social norms to bounded rationality opens up new avenues of investigation into contracts and mechanism design. This book makes an important contribution to the study of bounded rationality by pulling together many separate strands of research in the area of mechanism design, and providing detailed analysis of the impact of societal values on contracts.

Download or read book Research Handbook on Executive Pay written by John S. Beasley and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Research on executive compensation has exploded in recent years, and this volume of specially commissioned essays brings the reader up-to-date on all of the latest developments in the field. Leading corporate governance scholars from a range of countries set out their views on four main areas of executive compensation: the history and theory of executive compensation, the structure of executive pay, corporate governance and executive compensation, and international perspectives on executive pay. The authors analyze the two dominant theoretical approaches – managerial power theory and optimal contracting theory – and examine their impact on executive pay levels and the practices of concentrated and dispersed share ownership in corporations. The effectiveness of government regulation of executive pay and international executive pay practices in Australia, the US, Europe, China, India and Japan are also discussed. A timely study of a controversial topic, the Handbook will be an essential resource for students, scholars and practitioners of law, finance, business and accounting.

Download or read book The Rule of Recognition and the U S Constitution written by Matthew Adler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-20 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Rule of Recognition and the U.S. Constitution is a volume of original essays that discuss the applicability of Hart's rule of recognition model of a legal system to U.S. constitutional law. The contributors are leading scholars in analytical jurisprudence and constitutional theory, including Matthew Adler, Larry Alexander, Mitchell Berman, Michael Dorf, Kent Greenawalt, Richard Fallon, Michael Green, Kenneth Einar Himma, Stephen Perry, Frederick Schauer, Scott Shapiro, Jeremy Waldron, and Wil Waluchow. The volume makes a contribution both in jurisprudence, using the U.S. as a "test case" that highlights the strengths and limitations of the rule of recognition model; and in constitutional theory, by showing how the model can illuminate topics such as the role of the Supreme Court, the constitutional status of precedent, the legitimacy of unwritten sources of constitutional law, the choice of methods for interpreting the text of the Constitution, and popular constitutionalism.

Download or read book Economics and Happiness written by Luigino Bruni and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-12-15 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first of its kind to provide a comprehensive overview of the burgeoning field of happiness and economics. The essays collected in this book provide an authoritative and comprehensive assessment of the theoretical, applied and partly experimental aspects of the whole field and discusses the economic, sociological, philosophical, and psychological contributions to the field. The book breaks new ground, particularly on the more recent directions of research on happiness, well-being, interpersonal relations and reciprocity. The meaning of happiness is thoroughly explored and the tension between various definitions is discussed. The volume opens with Richard Easterlin's own assessment of the main issues. Other authors include Robert H. Frank, Robert Sugden, Bruno S. Frey, Alois Stutzer, Richard Layard, Martha C. Nussbaum, Matt Matravers, Bernard M.S, van Praag, Oded Stark, You Q. Wang, Ruut Veenhoven, Charlotte Phelps, Stefano Zamagni, and Luigi Pasinetti.

Download or read book What Makes Us Smart written by Samuel Gershman and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: are we smart? -- Rational illusions -- Structure and origins of inductive bias -- Learning from others -- Good questions -- How to never be wrong -- Seeing patterns -- Are we consistent? -- Celestial teapots and flying spaghetti monsters -- The frugal brain -- Language design -- The uses of randomness -- Conclusion: what makes us smart.

Download or read book The Economics of Values Based Organisations written by Luigino Bruni and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-08-13 with total page 163 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book looks at the governance of values-based organizations (VBOs), which are organizations with a mission and identity based on ideals. Examples of VBOs include non-profit organizations, charities, NGOs, environmental, educational or cultural organizations, and social enterprises. The main objective of any VBO is to evolve and grow without losing its identity, which its survival is linked to in the medium and long terms. The focus of this book is the study of the relational and motivational dynamics during identity crisis, using critical mass models and Hirschman’s "exit and voice" framework. This book analyses the dynamics that arise in VBOs when the quality of the ideal deteriorates. On the basis of Hirschman’s "exit and voice" model, it analyses the factors that lead the best members – the intrinsically motivated ones who care most about the mission and ideals of the organization – to leave if their voice is ignored. We show that the possible cumulative effects caused by the "exit" of intrinsically motivated members can lead the organization to a process of deterioration. This book offers an analysis of these phenomena, which are usually studied in sociology or political science, by using an economic approach and the language of evolutionary game theory. By combining sociological politics and economics as a theoretical tool, we create a fresh approach to explore crises in organizations.

Download or read book Microeconomics written by Samuel Bowles and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-13 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this novel introduction to modern microeconomic theory, Samuel Bowles returns to the classical economists' interest in the wealth and poverty of nations and people, the workings of the institutions of capitalist economies, and the coevolution of individual preferences and the structures of markets, firms, and other institutions. Using recent advances in evolutionary game theory, contract theory, behavioral experiments, and the modeling of dynamic processes, he develops a theory of how economic institutions shape individual behavior, and how institutions evolve due to individual actions, technological change, and chance events. Topics addressed include institutional innovation, social preferences, nonmarket social interactions, social capital, equilibrium unemployment, credit constraints, economic power, generalized increasing returns, disequilibrium outcomes, and path dependency. Each chapter is introduced by empirical puzzles or historical episodes illuminated by the modeling that follows, and the book closes with sets of problems to be solved by readers seeking to improve their mathematical modeling skills. Complementing standard mathematical analysis are agent-based computer simulations of complex evolving systems that are available online so that readers can experiment with the models. Bowles concludes with the time-honored challenge of "getting the rules right," providing an evaluation of markets, states, and communities as contrasting and yet sometimes synergistic structures of governance. Must reading for students and scholars not only in economics but across the behavioral sciences, this engagingly written and compelling exposition of the new microeconomics moves the field beyond the conventional models of prices and markets toward a more accurate and policy-relevant portrayal of human social behavior.

Download or read book Morality Competition and the Firm written by Joseph Heath and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of provocative essays, Joseph Heath provides a compelling new framework for thinking about the moral obligations that private actors in a market economy have toward each other and to society. In a sharp break with traditional approaches to business ethics, Heath argues that the basic principles of corporate social responsibility are already implicit in the institutional norms that structure both marketplace competition and the modern business corporation. In four new and nine previously published essays, Heath articulates the foundations of a "market failures" approach to business ethics. Rather than bringing moral concerns to bear upon economic activity as a set of foreign or externally imposed constraints, this approach seeks to articulate a robust conception of business ethics derived solely from the basic normative justification for capitalism. The result is a unified theory of business ethics, corporate law, economic regulation, and the welfare state, which offers a reconstruction of the central normative preoccupations in each area that is consistent across all four domains. Beyond the core theory, Heath offers new insights on a wide range of topics in economics and philosophy, from agency theory and risk management to social cooperation and the transaction cost theory of the firm.

Download or read book The Limits of Leviathan written by Robert E. Scott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-08-14 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Much of international law, like much of contract, is enforced not by independent sanctions but rather through cooperative interaction among the parties, with repeat dealings, reputation, and a preference for reciprocity doing most of the enforcement work. Originally published in 2006, The Limits of Leviathan identifies areas in international law where formal enforcement provides the most promising means of promoting cooperation and where it does not. In particular, it looks at the International Criminal Court, the rules for world trade, efforts to enlist domestic courts to enforce orders of the International Court of Justice, domestic judicial enforcement of the Geneva Convention, the domain of international commercial agreements, and the question of odious debt incurred by sovereigns. This book explains how international law, like contract, depends largely on the willingness of responsible parties to make commitments.

Download or read book The Collaborative Enterprise written by Charles C. Heckscher and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-01 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Organizing for competitive advantage and profit How can businesses best tap diverse capabilities to generate new ideas, manufacture products, and properly execute strategy? In this groundbreaking, thoroughly researched book, organizational expert Charles Heckscher argues that, in a global network of creation and production, the dominant organizations will be those that master the still-uncodified skills of collaboration--replacing the giants of the past century who thrived on the mastery of bureaucratic systems. Though there has been much discussion of teamwork and alliances in recent decades, Heckscher argues that we are still a long way from fully understanding how to manage fluid and inconstant collaborations; and that this is an area dominated far more by rhetoric than reality. Using a combination of theory and extensive real-life case studies, Heckscher pushes the boundary of organization design and illustrates how companies are able to create new, effective patterns of interactions, and how they can build a culture and infrastructure necessary to support them. For organizational leaders in search of long-term competitive advantage, The Collaborative Enterprise offers sound research findings and invaluable insights.

Download or read book Do Incentive Contracts Crowd Out Voluntary Cooperation written by Ernst Fehr and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Science of Diversity written by Mona Sue Weissmark and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Using a multidisciplinary approach, The Science of Diversity reveals the theories, principles, and paradigms that illuminate people's understanding of the issues surrounding human diversity, social equality, and justice. Noted psychologist and educator Dr. Mona Weissmark assembles a rich array of research from anthropology, biology, religious studies, and the social sciences to write a scholarly diorama of diversity. This book contextualizes diversity historically, tracing the evolution of ideas about "the other" and about "we" and "them" to various forms of social organization-from the "hunter-gather," face-to-face, shared resource model to the anomie of megacities. Moreover, it explicates the concept of diversity, analyzing its meaning over time, place, and polity-from ancient Greece to the time of Donald Trump, from biblical parables to United Nations pronouncements. Ultimately, drawing on the author's groundbreaking research work with the children of Nazis and the children of holocaust survivors, the book suggests that one potential antidote to ethnic strife lies in the pursuit of Immanuel Kant's mandate, sapere aude (dare to know), combined with the development of compassion"--

Download or read book Law and Language written by Michael D. A. Freeman and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2013-02-21 with total page 638 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a broad overview of the interaction between law and language and the way they infuence each other. Contains papers from the 15th annual interdisciplinary colloquium held in the Law School of UCL in July 2011.

Download or read book The Drama of the Commons written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2002-03-15 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The "tragedy of the commons" is a central concept in human ecology and the study of the environment. It has had tremendous value for stimulating research, but it only describes the reality of human-environment interactions in special situations. Research over the past thirty years has helped clarify how human motivations, rules governing access to resources, the structure of social organizations, and the resource systems themselves interact to determine whether or not the many dramas of the commons end happily. In this book, leaders in the field review the evidence from several disciplines and many lines of research and present a state-of-the-art assessment. They summarize lessons learned and identify the major challenges facing any system of governance for resource management. They also highlight the major challenges for the next decade: making knowledge development more systematic; understanding institutions dynamically; considering a broader range of resources (such as global and technological commons); and taking into account the effects of social and historical context. This book will be a valuable and accessible introduction to the field for students and a resource for advanced researchers.

Download or read book Psychology Rationality and Economic Behaviour written by B. Agarwal and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-08-03 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Economics has paid little attention to the psychology of economic behaviour, leading to somewhat simplistic assumptions about human nature. The psychological aspects have typically been reduced to standard utility theory, based on a narrow conception of rationality and self-interest maximization. The contributions in this volume, some focused on analytical models and methodology, others on laboratory and field experiments, challenge these assumptions, and provide novel and complex understandings of human motivation and economic decision-making. With a pioneering introduction by the book's two editors, this volume brings together exciting contributions to a field that is rapidly growing in influence and reach.