Not that way! An Exploration of the Social Free-rider Problem as Cause of the Boomerang Effect from Social Norm Information

Author(s):  
Lauren Rhodes
2011 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ulrika Mårtensson

AbstractThe article argues that al-abarī’s History of the Prophets and the Kings provides a free rider-analysis of the decline of Abbasid state power. Al-abarī’s historical analysis considers state policy on land tax, and religion as a legal norm related to the social contract between the head of state and the landlords. It is concluded that al-abarī saw the misāa tax system and ‘rule of law’ as the principal conditions for imperial rule, and that al-abarī’s History already provides an answer to modern historians’ questions as to why the Abbasid state crumbled, and what role religion played in the political economy.


Author(s):  
Sharon D. Welch

Assaults on truth and divisions about the nature of wise governance are not momentary political challenges, unique to particular moments in history. Rather, they demonstrate fundamental weaknesses in human reasoning and core dangers in ways of construing both individual freedom and cohesive communities. It will remain an ongoing challenge to learn to deal rationally with what is an intrinsic irrationality in human cognition and with what is an intrinsic tendency toward domination and violence in human collectivities. In times of intense social divisions, it is vital to consider the ways in which humanism might function as the social norm by, paradoxically, functioning in a way different from other social norms. Humanism is not the declaration that a certain set of values or norms are universally valid. At its best and most creative, humanism is not limited to a particular set of norms, but is, rather, the commitment to a certain process in which norms are continuously created, critically evaluated, implemented, sustained or revised. Humanism is a process of connection, perception, implementation, and critique, and it applies this process as much to itself as to other traditions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoichiro Fujii ◽  
Michiko Ogaku ◽  
Mahito Okura ◽  
Yusuke Osaki

AbstractSome people have optimistic expectations regarding their accident probability, and thus, refrain from purchasing adequate insurance. This study investigates how insurance firms use advertisements to lower the ratio of optimistic individuals in the market. The main results are as follows: first, the optimal level of advertisements is maximized when the insurance premium is moderate. Second, the maximum level of advertisement varies according to the degree of optimism, which is measured by the difference between accurate and optimistic accident probabilities. Third, the advertisement decision is affected by the free-rider problem, and the equilibrium number of insurance firms with advertisement is always larger than that of firms without advertisement in a competitive insurance market.


2013 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 384-404
Author(s):  
Marcus Holmes ◽  
Costas Panagopoulos
Keyword(s):  

1979 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN McMILLAN

Do patents facilitate or frustrate innovation? Lawyers, economists, and politicians who have staked out strong positions in this debate often attempt to validate their claims by invoking the historical record—but they typically get the history wrong. The purpose of this book is to get the history right by showing that patent systems are the product of contending interests at different points in production chains battling over economic surplus. The larger the potential surplus, the more extreme are the efforts of contending parties, now and in the past, to search out, generate, and exploit any and all sources of friction. Patent systems, as human creations, are therefore necessarily ridden with imperfections; nirvana is not on the menu. The most interesting intellectual issue is not how patent systems are imperfect, but why historically US-style patent systems have come to dominate all other methods of encouraging inventive activity. The answer offered by the essays in this volume is that they create a temporary property right that can be traded in a market, thereby facilitating a productive division of labor and making it possible for firms to transfer technological knowledge to one another by overcoming the free-rider problem. Precisely because the value of a patent does not inhere in the award itself but rather in the market value of the resulting property right, patent systems foster a decentralized ecology of inventors and firms that ceaselessly extends the frontiers of what is economically possible.


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