Books like The moral economy by Samuel S. Bowles


Should the idea of economic man-the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus-determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding "no." Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may "crowd out" ethical and generous motives and thus backfire. But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.
First publish date: 2016
Authors: Samuel S. Bowles
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The moral economy by Samuel S. Bowles

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Books similar to The moral economy (6 similar books)

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Economics for the Common Good by 1319010|Jean Tirole book cover

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The moral economy of the peasant by 8699903|James C. Scott book cover

πŸ“˜ The moral economy of the peasant

"James C. Scott places the critical problem of the peasant household -- subsistence -- at the center of this study. The fear of food shortages, he argues persuasively, explains many otherwise puzzling technical, social, and moral arrangements in peasant society, such as resistance to innovation, the desire to own land even at some cost in terms of income, relationships with other people, and relationships with institutions, including the state. Once the centrality of the subsistence problem is recognized, its effects on notions of economic and political justice can also be seen. Scott draws from the history of agrarian society in lower Burma and Vietnam to show how the transformations of the colonial era systematically violated the peasants' 'moral economy' and created a situation of potential rebellion and revolution. Demonstrating keen insights into the behavior of people in other cultures and a rare ability to generalize soundly from case studies, Scott offers a different perspective on peasant behavior that will be of interest particularly to political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists, and Southeast Asianists."--Publisher description.

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The Political Economy of the Welfare State by James Midgley
The Limits of Neoliberalism by William Davies
Justice and the Human Good by John Rawls

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