Nearly 50 years ago, Mark Granovetter initiated a fundamental critique of economic theory. His critique was the starting point for the New Economic Sociology (NES). Particularly, he criticized the emerging theories of New Institutional Economics (NIE), focusing on the ideas of Oliver Williamson (1932–2020) who was one of the most prominent representatives of this school. In this paper we address this critique and Williamson’s response to it. Williamson argued from the perspective of transaction cost economics, while Granovetter focused on the social embeddedness of individuals. The impact of this debate on economics has resulted in an increased research interest in the role of institutions and social networks. However, both lines of thought did not bring economic and sociological theories together. NES established as a subdiscipline in Sociology. Its central concept of embeddedness continued to attract interest but proved to be of little empirical applicability. NIE, on the other hand, has become part of mainstream economics.
The measurement of transaction costs in an economy is a question of present interest and a difficult problem for every country. Attempts for measuring the transaction costs do not take effect mostly due to the fact that the data being gathered by the System of National Accounts do not correspond to the necessary for the measurement of transaction costs data, a fact that has motivated the authors of this paper to make a suggestion to the national statistics for changes in the official statistical studies that would largely improve the quality of transaction costs measurement.
Измерването на транзакционните разходи на едно национално стопанство е актуален и труден проблем за всяка страна. Опитите за измерването на транзационните разходи не дават добри резултати главно поради факта, че данните които се събират по правилата на системата на националните сметки до голяма степен не съответстват на необходите за предсмятането на транзакционните разходи данни, което мотивира авторите на статията да направят предложения към официалната статистика да се въведат статистически изследвания, които значително биха подобрили качеството на измерването на транзакционните разходи.
This paper addresses the participative pricing mechanism of Pay-What-You-Want pricing as related to Marcel Mauss’s concept of the Gift. Reciprocity is a behavioural pattern imminent to the Gift as well as to Pay-What-You-Want pricing. The paper refers to results from behavioural economics in order to identify factors that positively influence reciprocity. It is argued that the aspects elaborated on in the Gift are also relevant to the PWYW pricing mechanism when it comes to implementations of the latter as one of the corporate pricing strategies.
The work of Marcel Mauss is mostly unknown to economists.Only few references to the Gift, Mauss' best known work, are to be found in the economic literature (e.g.Kranton, 1996).This is also true for behavioural economics even if authors from this field regularly address topics such as reciprocity and other forms of non-selfish behavior.These topics are closely related to the Gift.Economic anthropologists also tend to be scarcely aware of the developments in behavioural economics and the related research methods and findings.They appear, instead, to nourish the long established enemy image of neoclassical theory (e.g.Hann & Hart, 2011).By and large, applications of behavioural economics methodologies are rarely found (but see Henrich, 2000;Henrich et al., 2001).Mutual acceptance of key concepts and knowledge about different methodologies of the other discipline, however, may be fertile ground for developing existing concepts further.This short note addresses a specific case.It states that the concept of the Gift, as developed by Marcel Mauss (1923Mauss ( /1924) ) nearly 100 years ago, can serve as a contextual framework of the Centipede game.The Centipede game is one of the workhorses used in behavioural economics and it has been tested in many different variations in the lab and in the field.The purpose of this note is not only to bring Mauss's work to the attention of economists, but also to attract anthropologists' attention to methods used in economics which can be fruitfully applied to their research topics.The structure of the text is as follows: Section 2 briefly outlines the idea of the Gift.Section 3 introduces a standard Centipede game and provides a short literature review of empirical findings.Sections 4 sets the Centipede game in the context of the Gift and addresses similarities and dissimilarities.Section 5 is dedicated to the discussion of game trees.The last section concludes. The GiftMarcel Mauss's (1990) concept of the Gift has to be considered within his general approach to society.According to him, individual decisions depend on both individual freedom and social obligations (Hart, 2007:481).Mauss (1990:70) writes that a citizen "[…] must act by taking into account his own interests, and those of society and its subgroups."In this sense a person acts as an individual within a given social context.Mauss (1990:39-43) examines the Gift in specific potlatch cultures and also in a European historical context and refers to three immanent obligations.Firstly, he addresses the 'obligation to give'.This obligation is central for groups and for individuals within a given social order so as to preserve a social position through the signalling and demonstration of wealth, fortune, being blessed by the spirits and gods, etc.This obligation goes hand in hand with a compulsory invitation to gift giving occasions, i.e., the spread of information to all potential receivers of gifts before a gift-giving occasion takes place; for instance, the invitation to a feast.Secondly, the invited are 'obliged to accept' the invitation.They have only few reasons to refuse.Moreover, a 'burden' (Mauss, 1990:41) is attached to the gift and its acceptance.This burden becomes obvious in the third obligation, i.e., recipients of a gift have the 'obligation to reciprocate' in the future.In the specific form of the potlatch, the value of the reciprocation should be higher than the value of the gift received.Indeed, with the fulfilment of this third obligation a new round of reciprocal exchanges is likely to start.Any violation of these obligations, e.g., not to invite, to decline an invitation, to reject a gift, or to make an insufficient reciprocation of the gift, inevitably has social consequences for the offender and/or her/his group.Social costs can be a loss of social esteem, status, power, etc.
Both the title of this book and the introduction suggest an idea to which the authors in this volume and many scientific authors, but not everyone from the academic discipline of economics, would fully subscribe. It implies that ‘social sciences’ is an umbrella term that constitutes a superset of disciplines, of which economics in turn is one. However, there is also an alternative interpretation of economics that the editors and authors in this book view rather critically and which recently has been gaining supporters among economists. In this interpretation there is a sharp division between economics and the social sciences that classifies both disciplines as something rather different. A further analysis of the relationship between economics and the other social sciences, with a special emphasis in the area of migration studies, was the main aim of the conference at which most of the papers in this volume were presented.
The literature on enterprises in Sub-Saharan Africa provides evidence that there are significant differences between companies run by members of the majority population and those run by members of minorities. Differences are frequently related to size, age and certain success indicators. However, it remains unclear whether decisions concerning the acquisition of personnel also diverge. This article outlines results of a questionnaire survey on recruitment methods of enterprises in Tanzania. The authors tried to discover differences in the recruitment strategies of Tanzanian-African and Tanzanian-Asian companies, but found none. The interpretation is that companies operate in similar business environments and face comparable exogenously given institutional restrictions. Thus, strategies of personnel recruitment seem to be alike.
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The text focuses on the implementation of experiental learning techniques in a seminar in experimental economics. The seminar aims at deepening students' understanding of particular topics in behavioral economics as well as introducing the experimental approach as a research method. We argue that students are capable of developing and conducting different variants of economic experiments on their own. In this way, they come to comprehend the matter taught better than through traditional classroom experiments. Additionally, students enrich their social competence by acquiring proficiency in solving complex problems within a group.
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