Rationality, markets, and morals: RMM
Studies at the intersection of philosophy and economics
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Hume without Spontaneous Order
(2015)The question whether it is possible to be both a Humean and a contractarian arises from the interpretation of Hume as a theorist of spontaneous order, a theory that is usually taken to be incompatible with contractarianism. ... -
Do Bankers Have Deviant Moral Attitudes? Negative Results from a Tentative Survey
(2015)Bankers have a reputation for deviating from standard morals. It is an open question, though, if this claim can be substantiated. Here, it is tested directly if bankers respond differently to moral dilemmas. Evaluations ... -
Colin Mayer: Firm Commitment
(2014) -
Ordering Anarchy
(2014)Ordered social life requires rules of conduct that help generate and preserve peaceful and cooperative interactions among individuals. The problem is that these social rules impose costs. They prohibit us from doing some ... -
Children’s Rights with Endogenous Fertility
(2014)This paper uses hypothetical contractarianism to consider the value of children's rights laws as a means of protecting children. Laws protecting children from their parents have the unintended but predictable consequence ... -
Hume’s Theory of Justice
(2014)Hume developed an original and revolutionary theoretical paradigm for explaining the spontaneous emergence of the classic conventions of justice-stable possession, transference of property by consent, and the obligation ... -
You Are Not Worth the Risk: Lawful Discrimination in Hiring
(2014)Increasing empirical research on productivity supports the use of statistical or `rational' discrimination in hiring. The practice is legal for features of job applicants not covered by human rights discrimination laws, ... -
Anarchy, State, and Property
(2014)The fundamental function of the state is safeguarding the safety of its citizens. The combination of Nozick's invisible hand explanation with his theory of justice implies that individuals can have full private property ... -
Social Yes; Contract No
(2014)Social contract theory is incoherent and it does not work as desired. Among the most obvious disanalogies is that contracts are enforced by a third party, commonly the state. There is no such external enforcer for a ... -
Expanding the Nudge: Designing Choice Contexts and Choice Contents
(2014)To nudge is to design choice contexts in order to improve choice outcomes. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein emphatically endorse nudging but reject more restrictive means. In contrast, I argue that the behavioral psychology ... -
Consent as the Foundation of Political Authority - A Lockean Perspective
(2014)The article focuses on the justification provided by classical contract theory for the right of states to enact laws and the corresponding obligation of political allegiance. At first the distinction between political ... -
Preference and Similarity between Alternatives
(2014)We discuss how information about choice-relevant differences between alternatives can be revealed from preference information. We provide axiomatic characterisations of two classes of Similarity Revelation Rules: one that ... -
Commitment and Goals
(2013)In this Comment, I examine Christoph Hanisch's recent contribution to this journal. In commenting on Hanisch's essay, I offer an interpretation of Amartya Sen's notion of `commitment' which makes committed choices both ... -
Social Contract Theory Should Be Abandoned
(2013)I argue that social-contract theory cannot succeed because reasonable people may always disagree, and that social-contract theory is irrelevant to the problem of the legitimacy of a form of government or of a system of ...