Theory of Values

Andreas Georgiadis and Alan Manning ()

CEP Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Performance, LSE

Abstract: Economists have a well-developed theory of value but the theory of why people hold thevalues they do is rudimentary at best. In spite of the fact that it is common to argue thatvalues are important, most work on values is normative and the positive theory of values isrelatively under- developed. In this paper we propose a simple yet general way to think aboutvalues - they are about how one trades-off one own's utility against that of others - and arguethat we can draw on the large literature on pro-social behavior for hypotheses on how peoplewill choose values. Then, using data from the UK's Citizenship Survey we show howmodels of self-interest, fairness, reciprocity and identity, can explain many of the patternsthat we observe in the data across a wide variety of values.

Keywords: Values; Pro-Social Behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-evo, nep-hpe, nep-neu and nep-soc
Date: 2009-07
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cep:cepdps:dp0943

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