Description
Book SynopsisArgues that market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. This book shows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. It examines the biological basis of economic morality and traces the connections between morality and markets.
Trade Review"Moral Markets challenges the 'homo economicus' rational choice framework of mainstream economics with 15 chapters contributed by a team researching the nature of values in economic thinking. Zak has compiled what may become a starting point for further work on this topic, given the volume's scope and creative insights. After philosophical reflections from Aristotle to Adam Smith on the origin and nature of values, the readings focus on evolutionary processes that form values like fairness and reciprocity... [T]his collection is important in helping to reconsider the value-free claims of economics."--J. Halteman, Wheaton College, for CHOICE "The book's span is huge, taking in cooperation among chimpanzees, the status of moral emotions, and the role of contract law in encouraging trustworthy behaviour, as well as areas more familiar to economists such as the effect of incentive schemes on employee effort... Moral Markets is an interesting and valuable book, addressing important and under-researched questions."--Joe Perkins, World Economics "Moral Markets is a fascinating indicator in its own right of trends in thinking about markets... This ... should be part of strategic thinking for any senior manager, in library work and beyond. This is also an attractive addition to the economics and business ethics shelves of any academic library."--Stuart Hannabuss, Library Review "Moral Markets is challenging not only because it brings to bear a wide variety of scientific fields of inquiry but also because it is willing to buck widely held assumptions about markets and what human nature really is. By drawing the best available science, it manages to offer a sense both of objectivity and of hope that perhaps we are not as nasty and brutish as we sometimes seem."--Ray Bert, Civil Engineering "This is an interesting and important collection of essays, indicating some important shifts of thinking and some of the positive benefits of work in 'neuro-economics'."--Geoffrey M Hodgson, Journal of Economic Issues "Moral Markets provides the serious student of business, government, and society with the necessary intellectual tools to reengineer their knowledge and practice of virtue, and perhaps enlighten them on why and how 'goodness' ultimately serves society."--Sean D. Jasso, PhD, Graziado Business Report "Everyone who is vaguely interested in how motivated choice interacts with morals should own this collection. The bibliographies span a dozen research areas and offer precise guidance to enter ongoing discussions."--David M. Levy, Journal of Bioeconomics "Moral Markets provides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economic one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis."--World Book Industry
Table of ContentsForeword by Michael C. Jensen ix Introduction by Paul J. Zak xi Preface: Is Free Enterprise Values in Action? by Oliver R. Goodenough and Monika Gruter Cheney xiii Acknowledgments xxxi List of Contributors xxxiii PART I: PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF VALUES Chapter One: The Stories Markets Tell: Affordances for Ethical Behavior in Free Exchange by William D. Casebeer 3 Chapter Two: Free Enterprise, Sympathy, and Virtue by Robert C. Solomon 16 Chapter Three: The Status of Moral Emotions in Consequentialist Moral Reasoning by Robert H. Frank 42 PART II: NONHUMAN ORIGINS OF VALUES Chapter Four: How Selfish an Animal? The Case of Primate Cooperation by Frans B. M. de Waal 63 Chapter Five: Fairness and Other-Regarding Preferences in Nonhuman Primates by Sarah F. Brosnan 77 PART III: THE EVOLUTION OF VALUES AND SOCIETY Chapter Six: The Evolution of Free Enterprise Values by Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd 107 Chapter Seven: Building Trust by Wasting Time by Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Michael Lachmann 142 PART IV: VALUES AND THE LAW Chapter Eight: Taking Conscience Seriously by Lynn A. Stout 157 Chapter Nine: Trustworthiness and Contract by Erin Ann O'Hara 173 Chapter Ten: The Vital Role of Norms and Rules in Maintaining Open Public and Private Economies by David Schwab and Elinor Ostrom 204 Chapter Eleven: Values, Mechanism Design, and Fairness by Oliver R. Goodenough 228 PART V: VALUES AND THE ECONOMY Chapter Twelve: Values and Value: Moral Economics by Paul J. Zak 259 Chapter Thirteen: Building a Market: From Personal to Impersonal Exchange by Erik O. Kimbrough, Vernon L. Smith, and Bart J. Wilson 280 Chapter Fourteen: Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model by Herbert Gintis and Rakesh Khurana 300 Chapter Fifteen: What's a Business For? by Charles Handy 328 Index 339
