JournalTOCs

Homo Oeconomicus
Number of Followers: 1

Hybrid journal (It can contain Open Access articles)
ISSN (Print) 0943-0180 - ISSN (Online) 2366-6161
Published by Springer-Verlag

[2469 journals]

Critical rationalism and metaethics
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  Abstract: Abstract For Hans Albert, what is to be deemed morally right or wrong could either be based on human conventions (decisions) or on findings of facts (cognitions). As an ethical non-cognitivist Albert emphasizes that decision-based conventions are constitutive of ‘morals/ethics’. Yet, it has been claimed that Popper’s falsificationism applies to prescriptive moral theories roughly as it does to descriptive empirical theories and that this analogy justifies a variant of ethical cognitivism. It is argued in this paper, that such ethical cognitivism would require beyond empirical and analytical fact-finding other abilities of moral cognition which are to be rejected within Albert’s critical rationalism and realism.
  PubDate: 2022-03-31
The Social Contract, the Game of Life and the Shadow of the Future
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  Abstract: Abstract Ken Binmore’s (1994, 1998) treatment of his Game of Life as a bargaining game and his treatment of morality as an equilibrium selection device for that game, are examined in the context of repeated games with both infinite and finite horizon. With a finite horizon, there are three different viable approaches. They differ in the way they impact his treatment of morality.
  PubDate: 2022-03-01
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-022-00119-6
Philosophic Fables
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  Abstract: Abstract Ken Binmore in Crooked Thinking or Straight Thought' argues that "straight thought" in the tradition of Epicurus and his naturalistic, empirical followers is the proper cure for the "crooked thinking" of philosophers. In response, Gaus argues that the dichotomy between "crooked" and "straight" thinking in philosophy is a false one that ignores what he calls the "paradox of philosophy:" that philosophers are committed to the authority of reason, while also recognizing that reason rarely speaks with one voice on important issues. Instead, Gaus argues that we should think of philosophical doctrines as fables that are constructed to scratch philosophical itches that arise from the use of reason. Insofar as Binmore develops one more such fable, Gaus argues that it doesn't quite scratch the itches that previous thinkers like Gauthier have found troubling.
  PubDate: 2022-02-21
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-022-00120-z
An Epicurean State of Nature
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  Abstract: Abstract I present a game-theoretic model of an Epicurean State of Nature based upon Epicurus’ proto-evolutionary account of human development. I argue that for Epicurus the State of Nature has at least two stages. I model the first stage, where according to Epicurus the adult humans lead mainly solitary lives and are all roughly equally capable of harming each other, as an extension of the Hawk-Dove game where agents can follow a contingency strategy. I argue that at this first stage the individuals are likely to converge to a contingency strategy convention where they generally avoid conflict. I model the second stage, where according to Epicurus families emerge and join to form communities, by introducing heterogeneity with respect to ability to harm into the population engaging in the extended Hawk-Dove game of the first stage. In particular, in some extended Hawk-Dove encounters weak agents who are relatively vulnerable members of some families encounter strong counterpart agents who belong to other families. I argue that this heterogeneity can result in the population converging to an equilibrium corresponding to a State of Nature war. I conclude Epicurus can reach a conclusion similar to Hobbes’ conclusion that war is inevitable in a State of Nature. But Epicurus would arrive at this Hobbesian conclusion by a rather un-Hobbesian route, for the supporting argument relies upon significant inequalities in powers among the residents of the State of Nature.
  PubDate: 2022-02-21
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-022-00118-7
Ken Binmore: Behavioral Scientist
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  Abstract: Abstract This paper discusses Ken Binmore’s contribution to the debate on other-regarding preferences with reference to his contributions on equilibrium selection in non-cooperative games. We first assess his claim that the experimental evidence in favor of different types of social preferences has been vastly exaggerated. Then, we compare Binmore’s contribution with some recent developments of the literature. We show that recent experimental evidence lends support to his view that subjects’ behavior is mostly driven by a combination of learning and selfishness. From a theoretical point of view, we show that Binmore’s positions foreshadowed what is today known as the Social Heuristic Hypothesis.
  PubDate: 2022-01-18
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00117-0
The Pleasures of Tranquillity
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  Abstract: Abstract Epicurus posited that the best life involves the greatest pleasures. He also held that it involves attaining tranquillity. Many commentators, including Ken Binmore, have expressed scepticism that these two claims are compatible. For, they argue, Epicurus’ tranquil life is so austere that it is hard to see how it could be maximally pleasurable. Here, I offer an Epicurean account of the pleasures of tranquillity. I also consider different ways of valuing lives from a hedonistic point of view. Benthamite hedonists value lives by the sum of pleasures minus the sum of pains, weighted by intensity and duration. Meanwhile, Binmore proposes that Epicurus valued lives by their worst episode. In contrast, I outline an Epicurean argument for why the best life is one in which a person attains tranquillity and tastes its pleasures until death.
  PubDate: 2022-01-11
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00115-2
Vaihinger’s Fictionalism Meets Binmore’s
Knowledge-as-Commitment
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  Abstract: Abstract This article considers how Ken Binmore’s use of as-if reasoning is related to Hans Vaihinger’s fictionalism. Fictionalism is concerned with the role of idealizations that individuals use to guide their actions and to make sense of the world. Fictionalism employs idealizations that are adopted in spite of being known not to be true. Binmore distinguishes between knowledge-as-commitment and knowledge-as-certainty. With the former, one behaves as if what one knows cannot be wrong, whereas with the latter, behavior is predicated on justified-true-belief. It is argued that by treating knowledge as knowledge-as-commitment, Binmore is employing fictions in Vaihinger’s sense. This argument is developed by considering how knowledge-as-commitment is used in Binmore’s model of Bayesian decision-making.
  PubDate: 2022-01-03
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00116-1
Evaluating Utility Streams
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  Abstract: Abstract This paper proposes a radical alternative to discounting utility streams that allows each payoff in a stream to be treated equally. It is based on the psychology of how humans perceive time—not as the objective clicking of time on a clock—but in terms of the incidents to which attention needs to be paid. The paper’s conclusions receive some support from the discovery of the Peak-End Rule, in which laboratory subjects recall only the worst and the last experience during painful episodes.
  PubDate: 2021-10-29
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00114-3
From Polytheism to Monotheism: Zoroaster and Some Economic Theory
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  Abstract: Abstract The prophet Zoroaster founded the first monotheistic religion in history, which once rose to great imperial status and still survives unchanged today despite centuries of Muslim pressure. Unlike the founders of other monotheistic religions after him, he achieved this not through the overthrow of the original Iranian polytheism but through its deep reform—a strategy that made acceptance easier and ensured a continuing role for the priests. Monotheistic reform is thus a third way out of ancient Indo-European polytheism, besides extinction in the Greco-Roman case and mutation into sectarian theism in the Indian case. This paper surveys the Iranian story and offers two economic models to account for the two key factors that made the transition to monotheism possible: the theological structure and the role of the priesthood.
  PubDate: 2021-10-07
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00113-4
Corruption in Organizations: Some General Formulations and
(In-)Corruptibility Results
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  Abstract: Abstract In a classical social choice framework, this paper presents two formulations of the notion of corruption and examines their consequences for decision making in an organization. It is shown that any organization is corruptible if a minimal concept of corruption is used to diagnose corruptibility; however, if a more demanding concept of corruption is applied, there are organizations that are immune to such stronger forms of corruption. There are no constitutionally incorruptible organizational forms but weakly incorruptible constitutions can exist.
  PubDate: 2021-09-12
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00112-5
Are Weighted Games Sufficiently Good for Binary Voting'
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  Abstract: Abstract Binary “yes”–“no” decisions in a legislative committee or a shareholder meeting are commonly modeled as a weighted game. However, there are noteworthy exceptions. E.g., the voting rules of the European Council according to the Treaty of Lisbon use a more complicated construction. Here we want to study the question if we lose much from a practical point of view, if we restrict ourselves to weighted games. To this end, we invoke power indices that measure the influence of a member in binary decision committees. More precisely, we compare the achievable power distributions of weighted games with those from a reasonable superset of weighted games. It turns out that the deviation is relatively small.
  PubDate: 2021-08-09
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00111-6
“Not This One”: Experimental Use of the Approval and
Disapproval Ballot
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  Abstract: Abstract In the last few decades there has been a decrease in electoral turnout in most democratic countries. It is crucial to understand why citizens do not vote. One of the many explanations for abstaining may be that voters are not offered the possibility to express dissatisfaction explicitly. The right to say no to candidates in presidential elections is vindicated and tested. A field experiment with a ballot that allows voters to vote against candidates was conducted during the 2017 French presidential elections. The experiment demonstrates that participants appreciate the additional expressive possibilities offered by the experimental ballot, in particular the possibility of casting a vote against candidates. Moreover a richer picture of the political landscape is obtained. If this ballot were used, clearer signals could be sent to political actors.
  PubDate: 2021-05-25
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00110-7
Elections with Multiple Positive and Negative Votes
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  Abstract: Abstract We investigate the performance of a voting procedure in which voters cast multiple votes, with some votes positive and some negative. The procedure is a variant of the “D21” method proposed by Janeček (2016). The setting is the 2018 Czech Republic presidential election. Evidence is provided through a survey of secondary school students asked to cast ballots in both single- and multi-vote election experiments. Using the survey data, we estimate a spatial voting model to uncover ideological positions of candidates and respondents. Results suggest that the multi-vote procedure may limit the success of extreme candidates in elections.
  PubDate: 2021-04-11
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00109-0
Power in Networks: The Medici
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  Abstract: Abstract We use the Public Good (Power) Index and the Public Value to rank the marriages of business relations of 15 elite families in fifteenth century Florence—with a focus on the networks of the Medici and the taking of power by Cosimo de’ Medici. Theoretical analysis supports the outstanding position of the Medici family and explains much of its historical success.
  PubDate: 2021-03-10
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00108-1
Hans Albert’s Systematic Approach to Critical Rationalism
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  Abstract: Abstract On occasion of Hans Albert’s 100-th anniversary the paper addresses a wider audience of philosophers, political scientists and economists who are broadly interested in critical rationalism but not well acquainted with Albert’s systematization of the Popperian philosophical program. Laying out Albert’s intellectual career and his critical realism, fallibilism and methodological revisionism puts him on the present intellectual PPE map as a philosopher-economist in his own right. Beyond contributions to the “Positivismusstreit” and his seminal work on “Model Platonism” in economics, in particular his views on technological thinking and the role of institutions in science have wide ranging, still underappreciated implications.
  PubDate: 2021-02-26
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00107-2
The Economic Tradition and the Problem of Social Order: Hans Albert’s
Critique of Welfare Economics and the Perspective of Constitutional
Political Economy
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  Abstract: Abstract The paper discusses Hans Albert’s ambivalent relation to economics, his rejection of its neoclassical version and his approval of its classical tradition. Against this background it examines Albert’s critique of welfare economics, contrasting his arguments with the outlook of constitutional political economy.
  PubDate: 2021-02-15
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-021-00106-3
Complexity, Power Laws and a Humean Argument in Risk Management: The
Fundamental Inadequacy of Probability Theory as a Foundation for Modeling
Complex Risk in Banking
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  Abstract: Abstract Whenever risk managers are confronted with deep uncertainty and organized complexity, probabilistic inference methods are used. These seem able to allow for crisp inputs and precise results. However, as has been noted by several thinkers (e.g., von Hayek in Studies in philosophy, politics and economics, Routledge, London, 1967; Weaver in American Scientist, 36: 536–544, 1948), such methods cannot be used effectively in such situations. This might basically sound like old wine in a new bottle and, in fact, objections to, and limitations of conventional, i.e., probabilistic risk modeling are anything but unheard of in the literature of banking and finance. However, this paper introduces for the first time an argument, inspired by reflections on the old riddle of induction, from which those shortcomings of the limited suitability of probability can be derived. It demonstrates that any choice of a particular probability distribution for a given risk management purpose is necessarily arbitrary, i.e., it is not grounded in the data but in the choices of the statistician or risk manager, and cannot be justified by appealing to something more objective. Thereby, this paper unmasks the illusion that financial data and extreme losses are well-described by non-standard probability functions such as power laws that have been embraced at the expense of bell curves in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008. Moreover, although we do not propose a positive solution, we believe that articulating the real, and as yet unnoticed, source of the problem is a key step towards developing a principle and tractable response.
  PubDate: 2020-12-01
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-020-00101-0
The Political Economy of Polytheism: the Indian Versus the Greco-Roman
Religions
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  Abstract: Abstract While most ancient polytheistic religions died out under the impact of monotheism, Hinduism stands out as a lively exception. Why was the Indian variety of polytheism more resilient than the Greek and Roman variety' This paper—the first to subject classical Hinduism to modern economic analysis—argues that the theological structure and the organization of priesthoods, which together determine the form of competition within the religious system, may help explain the different historical outcomes of these polytheistic systems.
  PubDate: 2020-12-01
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-020-00102-z
Modelling the Quest for Status in Ancient Greece: Paying for Liturgies
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  Abstract: Abstract The substantive view of the ancient economy argues that social considerations and especially the quest for status featured prominently in ancient Greece. Paying for liturgies, the private finance of public expenditure by wealthy individuals, offered the opportunity to acquire status by choosing the level of contributions to outperform rival providers. Effectively, liturgies were a system of finance of public provision through redistributive taxation sidestepping state administration of taxes and expenditures. Applying the insights of the economic approach to status, the paper examines status competition in ancient Athens and compares paying for liturgies with a hypothetical system of explicit income taxation of the rich. It is concluded that status seeking increased aggregate provision of public goods. The results formalise important aspects of substantivism and illustrate the value of formal economic analysis in the investigation of the ancient Greek economy.
  PubDate: 2020-12-01
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-020-00100-1
Introduction to the Special Issue “Bargaining”
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  PubDate: 2020-11-01
  DOI: 10.1007/s41412-020-00104-x