Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Why interpersonal relations matter for economics
- 2 From transactions to encounters: the joint generation of relational goods and conventional values
- 3 Fellow-feeling
- 4 Interpersonal interaction and economic theory: the case of public goods
- 5 Under trusting eyes: the responsive nature of trust
- 6 Interpersonal relations and job satisfaction: some empirical results in social and community care services
- 7 On the possible conflict between economic growth and social development
- 8 The logic of good social relations
- 9 The mutual validation of ends
- 10 Hic sunt leones: interpersonal relations as unexplored territory in the tradition of economics
- 11 Authority and power in economic and sociological approaches to interpersonal relations: from interactions to embeddedness
- 12 Interpersonal relations and economics: comments from a feminist perspective
- 13 Economics and interpersonal relations: ruling the social back in
- Envoi
- References
- Index
4 - Interpersonal interaction and economic theory: the case of public goods
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Notes on contributors
- Preface
- 1 Why interpersonal relations matter for economics
- 2 From transactions to encounters: the joint generation of relational goods and conventional values
- 3 Fellow-feeling
- 4 Interpersonal interaction and economic theory: the case of public goods
- 5 Under trusting eyes: the responsive nature of trust
- 6 Interpersonal relations and job satisfaction: some empirical results in social and community care services
- 7 On the possible conflict between economic growth and social development
- 8 The logic of good social relations
- 9 The mutual validation of ends
- 10 Hic sunt leones: interpersonal relations as unexplored territory in the tradition of economics
- 11 Authority and power in economic and sociological approaches to interpersonal relations: from interactions to embeddedness
- 12 Interpersonal relations and economics: comments from a feminist perspective
- 13 Economics and interpersonal relations: ruling the social back in
- Envoi
- References
- Index
Summary
Introduction
Many important phenomena of interpersonal interaction are opaque to standard economic analysis. This is particularly clear regarding the decentralised provision of public goods. I start with the standard model, discuss relevant evidence, then critically review the main alternatives. These all posit some form of non-selfish behaviour. Also, the accounts often propose some form of interrelatedness between individual agents in order to attenuate the crowding out prediction of the standard model. I argue that, to accommodate experimental data, models should be capable of predicting crowding in. Consideration of non-economic approaches to explaining contributions indicates that progress might require investigating the importance of social context and/or a departure from methodological individualism. Attention ought also to be paid to distinguishing between the effects of moral motivation and conformism.
Real examples of the explanandum include donations by individuals to organisations that produce goods and services but either do not, or cannot, practise exclusion. This comprises cases such as the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) in the United Kingdom, large-scale international voluntary organisations such as Friends of the Earth, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and Greenpeace, and cancer research organisations. Non-financial voluntary contributions comprise, inter alia, the voluntary recycling of household waste, voting and blood donation where it is not remunerated.
These cases are of great practical, not just theoretical, importance. Though individuals typically give a tiny fraction of their income, in aggregate this generates significant economic activity. The Charities Aid Foundation (Saxon-Harrold and Kendall, 1995) reports the following statistics.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Economics and Social InteractionAccounting for Interpersonal Relations, pp. 76 - 104Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005
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