In The Dignity of Commerce, Nathan Oman sets out an ambitious market theory of contract, which he argues is a superior normative foundation for contract law than either the moralist or economic justifications that currently dominate contract theory. In doing so, he sets out a robust defense of commerce and the marketplace as contributing to human flourishing that is a refreshing and welcome con...

In the last decade, with the publication of his Complete Works, there has been renewed interest in Walras’s methodology, mostly in the French economic literature. In particular, some scholars have argued that Walras characteristically confused positive and normative statements, a mistake all the more surprising given his impressive knowledge of philosophy (the so-called ‘Walras paradox’). This ...

Despite the strategic significance of a branded component strategy in both consumer and industrial settings, extant empirical research has focused on developing behavioral theories about consumer perceptions of such co-marketing alliances. There is no systematic empirical investigation about actual component branding decisions made by firms or their normative consequences. We offer the first em...

Many multichannel retailers are now offering customers the option to place their orders online and then pick them up from the retailers’ physical stores. As a relatively new type of multichannel retail service, the factors that influence consumers to use “online order/in-store pickup” (OOIP) remains largely unknown. This study uses the Behavioral Reasoning Theory to examine the factors that inf...

Purpose: This paper seeks to answer two research questions which are " What are key factors which influence Chinese to adopt mobile technology? " and " Do these key factors differ from factors which are identified from Western context? " Design/methodology: The findings from a pilot study with 45 in-depth interviews are used to develop questionnaires and test across 800 residents from the three...

M. Tomasello, A. Kruger, and H. Ratner (1993) proposed a theory of cultural learning comprising imitative learning, instructed learning, and collaborative learning. Empirical and theoretical advances in the past 20 years suggest modifications to the theory; for example, children do not just imitate but overimitate in order to identify and affiliate with others in their cultural group, children ...

In the wake of Jacobs’s criticisms of planning, planners increasingly felt a level of angst over, or even responsibility for, the condition of the city. Schooled in preparing and implementing plans and land use regulations, they appreciated the appeal of a new movement that offered a simple, tangible, and marketable recipe for practice. New urbanism theory is one of the contemporary urban theor...

The article tries to inquire a third way in normative ethics between consequentialism or utilitarianism and deontology or Kantianism. To find such a third way in normative ethics, one has to analyze the elements of these classical theories and to look if they are justified. In this article it is argued that an adequate normative ethics has to contain the following five elements: (1) normative i...

Even though the interaction of intrinsic motivation and concerns for social approval has important implications both for crowding out of intrinsic motivation through incentives and for producer choices, little is known about this interaction empirically. We present a laboratory experiment that provides evidence of a relevant interaction effect in the context of ethical consumption. We elicit a ...

Cognitive agents must have an explicit representation of their beliefs, desires and goals, and also a ‘theory of mind’ of the other agents. In this paper we propose a cognitive agent model where norms are based on three dimensions. First, we distinguish between agents whose behavior is governed by norms and autonomous normative systems; we call the latter normative agents. Second, we distinguis...