Moral Markets

by Zak, Paul J.

• ISBN13: 9780691135229
• ISBN10: 0691135223
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-21
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Like nature itself, modern economic life is driven by relentless competition and unbridled selfishness. Or is it? Drawing on converging evidence from neuroscience, social science, biology, law, and philosophy,Moral Marketsmakes the case that modern market exchange works only because most people, most of the time, act virtuously. Competition and greed are certainly part of economics, butMoral Marketsshows how the rules of market exchange have evolved to promote moral behavior and how exchange itself may make us more virtuous. Examining the biological basis of economic morality, tracing the connections between morality and markets, and exploring the profound implications of both,Moral Marketsprovides a surprising and fundamentally new view of economics--one that also reconnects the field to Adam Smith's position that morality has a biological basis.Moral Markets, the result of an extensive collaboration between leading social and natural scientists, includes contributions by neuroeconomist Paul Zak; economists Robert H. Frank, Herbert Gintis, Vernon Smith (winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics), and Bart Wilson; law professors Oliver Goodenough, Erin O'Hara, and Lynn Stout; philosophers William Casebeer and Robert Solomon; primatologists Sarah Brosnan and Frans de Waal; biologists Carl Bergstrom, Ben Kerr, and Peter Richerson; anthropologists Robert Boyd and Michael Lachmann; political scientists Elinor Ostrom and David Schwab; management professor Rakesh Khurana; computational science and informatics doctoral candidate Erik Kimbrough; and business writer Charles Handy.

Author Biography

Paul J. Zak is founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and professor of economics at Claremont Graduate University. Zak also serves as professor of neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center and senior researcher at UCLA.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. ix
Introduction	p. xi
Preface: Is Free Enterprise Values in Action?	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xxxi
List of Contributors	p. xxxiii
Philosophical Foundations Of Values
The Stories Markets Tell: Affordances for Ethical Behavior in Free Exchange	p. 3
Free Enterprise, Sympathy, and Virtue	p. 16
The Status of Moral Emotions in Consequentialist Moral Reasoning	p. 42
Nonhuman Origins Of Values
How Selfish an Animal? The Case of Primate Cooperation	p. 63
Fairness and Other-Regarding Preferences in Nonhuman Primates	p. 77
The Evolution Of Values And Society
The Evolution of Free Enterprise Values	p. 107
Building Trust	p. 142
Values And The Law
Taking Conscience Seriously	p. 157
Trustworthiness and Contract	p. 173
The Vital Role of Norms and Rules in Maintaining Open Public and Private Economies	p. 204
Values, Mechanism Design, and Fairness	p. 228
Values And The Economy
Values and Value: Moral Economics	p. 259
Building a Market: From Personal to Impersonal Exchange	p. 280
Corporate Honesty and Business Education: A Behavioral Model	p. 300
What's a Business For?	p. 328
Index	p. 339
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