Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity

Fairness and Retaliation: The Economics of Reciprocity

This paper shows that reciprocity has powerful implications for many economic domains. It is an important determinant in the enforcement of contracts and social norms and enhances the possibilities of collective action greatly. Reciprocity may render the provision of explicit incentive inefficient because the incentives may crowd out voluntary co-operation. It strongly limits the effects of com...

Fairness and Reciprocity

How can this behavior be explained? One possibility is that players are simply confused about what is going on in the lab. Other explanations center on the idea that players are conditioned by real-world environments where there is repeated interaction and/or sanctions for behaving selfishly. Finally, a number of leading theories suggest that people care intrinsically about “fairness” – that is...

The Economics of Fairness, Reciprocity and Altruism – Experimental Evidence and New Theories

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Justice as Fairness and Reciprocity

Because of the prominence it gives to motivation by reciprocity, John Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness" has been criticized for being insufficiently demanding with respect to our duties to the disabled and to people in other countries. Rawls's defenders have responded by downplaying reciprocity, emphasizing instead equal respect for persons as moral subjects as the foundation of the contr...

On the Economics of Reciprocity