The Economy of Esteem: An Essay on Civil and Political Society. By Geoffrey Brennan and Philip Pettit. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 339p. $59.50 cloth, $29.95 paper.

Much of social science has been devoted to the analysis of different mechanisms for social steering. The most well-known are the “invisible hand” market and the “iron hand” state. In many studies, these systems of coordination have been put forward as the only two that are available, and we have seen endless amounts of energy going into the pros and cons for each in different areas. In this book, two renowned scholars, one an economist (Geoffrey Brennan) and the other a political philosopher (Philip Pettit), put forward a third mechanism that they argue has largely been neglected, namely, esteem. The central idea is that while people are motivated by material benefits and by the incentives given by laws and regulations, they are also motivated by the opinions other people hold of them. In addition to material rewards, we also want other people we care about to think well of us. The authors argue that this esteem mechanism has largely been overlooked in modern neoclassical economics but that it was a major part of earlier economics, not least in Adam Smith's “A Theory of Moral Sentiments,” which was published in 1759, 13 years before “The Wealth of Nations.”