 On the Economic Relevance of the Principle of GratuitousnessCSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Abstract: In this paper the principle of gratuitousness and its relationships with other principles which motivate behaviour, such as those inspired by reciprocity, is analyzed. The basic premise is that gratuitousness is a feature acquired by an action by virtue of the intentions that inspire the action itself. In this respect, the search for gratuitousness may require to discriminate among aestetically equivalent actions on the basis of the psychological disposition of the actor. The main claim of the paper is that in economically relevant situations gratuituousness is to be conceived as a modality of cooperation, emerging as the outcome of a team reasoning perspective and motivating such a perspective without any need for reciprocity. This claim is analyzed with regard to blood donations and, more generally, with regard to the voluntary provision of goods. Keywords: Gratuituousness; reciprocity; team reasoning (search for similar items in EconPapers) Forthcoming in International Journal of Happiness and Development Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sef:csefwp:398 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in CSEF Working Papers from Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy Contact information at EDIRC. |
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