 Neither Self-interest Nor Self-sacrifice: The Fraternal Morality of Market RelationshipsA chapter in Games, Groups, and the Global Good, 2009, pp 259-283 from Springer Abstract: Abstract Economists have traditionally represented the market as a domain in which interactions are characterised by mutual unconcern; the self-interested motivations of individual agents are brought into harmony by the “invisible hand” of the market. Recently, however, economists have started to emphasise the extent to which markets rely on practices of impersonal trust, and to explain trust by hypothesising that economic agents are motivated by social preferences. In this paper, I review a range of social-preference theories and argue that none gives an adequate explanation of trust. These theories represent self-sacrificing motivations of giving and taking, while trust should be understood as cooperation for mutual benefit. Such cooperation is better represented by theories of team reasoning. I argue that the team-reasoning approach can be applied to market relationships in general. It leads to an understanding of market relationships as having moral content without involving self-sacrifice. Keywords: Mutual Benefit; Reservation Wage; Dictator Game; Trust Game; Material Payoff (search for similar items in EconPapers) There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it. Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:spschp:978-3-540-85436-4_16 Ordering information: This item can be ordered from DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-85436-4_16 Access Statistics for this chapter More chapters in Springer Series in Game Theory from Springer |
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