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Why do people believe in a zero-sum economy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2018

Samuel G. B. Johnson
Samuel G. B. Johnson*
Affiliation:
Division of Marketing, Business, and Society, University of Bath School of Management, Bath BA2 7AY, United Kingdom. [email protected]://www.sgbjohnson.com/
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Abstract

Zero-sum thinking and aversion to trade pervade our society, yet fly in the face of everyday experience and the consensus of economists. Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) evolutionary model invokes coalitional psychology to explain these puzzling intuitions. I raise several empirical challenges to this explanation, proposing two alternative mechanisms – intuitive mercantilism (assigning value to money rather than goods) and errors in perspective-taking.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 41 , 2018 , e172
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

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