scholarly journals Public goods and procreation

2014 ◽  
Vol 32 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 172-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Anomaly
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Embryo Selection ◽  
Reproductive Choices ◽  
Future People ◽  
Desirable Outcome ◽  
Individual Choices

Abstract Procreation is the ultimate public goods problem. Each new child affects the welfare of many other people, and some (but not all) children produce uncompensated value that future people will enjoy. This essay addresses challenges that arise if we think of procreation and parenting as public goods. These include whether individual choices are likely to lead to a socially desirable outcome, and whether changes in laws, social norms, or access to genetic engineering and embryo selection might improve the aggregate outcome of our reproductive choices.

scholarly journals Public Goods, Social Norms, and Naïve Beliefs

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 199-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
EDWARD CARTWRIGHT ◽  
AMRISH PATEL
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods

scholarly journals Interventions with Sticky Social Norms: A Critique

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rohan Dutta ◽  
David K Levine ◽  
Salvatore Modica
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
General Model ◽  
Negative Externality ◽  
Pigouvian Tax ◽  
Policy Interventions ◽  
The Cost ◽  
Unexpected Consequences

Abstract We study the consequences of policy interventions when social norms are endogenous but costly to change. In our environment a group faces a negative externality that it partially mitigates through incentives in the form of punishments. In this setting policy interventions can have unexpected consequences. The most striking is that when the cost of bargaining is high introducing a Pigouvian tax can increase output - yet in doing so increase welfare. An observer who saw that an increase in a Pigouvian tax raised output might wrongly conclude that this harmed welfare and that a larger tax increase would also raise output. This counter-intuitive impact on output is demonstrated theoretically for a general model and found in case studies for public goods subsidies and cartels.

The Origins of Voluntary Compliance: Attitudes toward Taxation in Urban Nigeria

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 215-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Bodea ◽  
Adrienne LeBas
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Exchange Mechanism ◽  
Positive Experience ◽  
Public Goods Provision ◽  
Tax Enforcement ◽  
Services Delivery ◽  
Voluntary Compliance ◽  
Tax Regimes

Voluntary compliance is an important aspect of strong tax regimes, but there is limited understanding of how social norms favoring compliance emerge. Using novel data from urban Nigeria, where tax enforcement is weak, this article shows that individuals with a positive experience of state services delivery are more likely to express belief in an unconditioned citizen obligation to pay tax. In addition to support for this fiscal exchange mechanism, social context is consequential. Where individuals have access to community-provided goods, which may substitute for effective state services provision, they are less likely to adopt pro-compliance norms. Finally, the article shows that norm adoption increases tax payment. These findings have broad implications for literatures on state formation, taxation and public goods provision.

Imagining Future People in Biomedical Law

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Britta van Beers
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Gene Editing ◽  
Emerging Technologies ◽  
Human Enhancement ◽  
Legal Regulation ◽  
Future People ◽  
The Future ◽  
Biomedical Technologies ◽  
Human Genetic Engineering ◽  
Enhancement Technologies

Human genetic engineering and other human enhancement technologies bring about uncertainties and risks on both the physical and the conceptual and intangible levels. Much of the controversy surrounding these emerging technologies is due to the fact that categorical distinctions, such as between person and thing, and chance and choice, are blurred in radical ways. As a consequence, the emergence of biomedical technologies also entails, what could be called, metaphysical risks and symbolic uncertainties. This chapter explores the ways in which imaginings of the future of mankind and mankind itself have found their way into international legal regulation of biomedical technologies through an analysis of recent debates on the international ban on human germline genetic engineering. This prohibition, which is at the heart of international biolaw, is currently being questioned as recent scientific breakthroughs in the field of gene-editing are about to turn human genetic engineering into a reality.

The Robots’ Ethics in Stanisław Lem’s Fables for Robots

Tekstualia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (50) ◽  
pp. 41-51
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Mazur-Lejman
Keyword(s):  
Genetic Engineering ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Moral Dimension ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
The Relationship

This essay is an analysis of selected ethical issues addressed in Stanisław Lem’s Fables for Robots. Specifi c problems under discussion include the subjectivity of thinking machines, the relationship between man and machine, the moral dimension of the robots’ rights (freedom, the relativism of good and evil, social norms or genetic engineering).

Reciprocity and Social Norms: Short- and Long-Run Crowding Out Effects of Financial Incentives

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-213
Author(s):  
Jinhua Zhao ◽  
◽  
John M. Kerr ◽  
Maria Knight Lapinski ◽  
Robert Shupp ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Behavior ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Intrinsic Motivation ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Financial Incentives ◽  
Crowding Out ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Using Data

We link the reciprocity model of Falk and Fischbacher (2006) with the theory of normative social behavior to study how financial incentives crowd out intrinsic motivation in both the short and long runs. Using data from a lab-based repeated public goods game, we find strong evidence in support of the reciprocity model and crowding out effects both when the payment is in place and after it stops. When the payment program is in place, subjects become less sensitive to reciprocity, perceive less kindness in others’ contributions, and care less about others’ welfare. The overall decrease in motivation to reciprocate reduces the effectiveness of the payment program by almost 50%. About 20% of the crowding out effect persists after the payment stops, and the reciprocity mechanism explains over three quarters of the long-run crowding out effect.

Religiosity as a public good

2008 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 2-12
Author(s):  
Richard Sherlock
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Good ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Political Order ◽  
National Defense ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Police Protection ◽  
Over Time

Public Goods can be seen as one important way in which societies sustain themselves over time. These are part of the puzzle of the development of political order. Public goods like the rule of law are non-substractable and non-excludable. For economists the classic textbook examples are national defense and police protection. In this paper I argue that religiosity can function like police protection, a means of sustaining order through fear of punishment from a transcendent source. As a means of reducing defection from social norms it has a role to play as a public good. But religion cannot at the same time be seen as the source of such norms or dissention will undermine the very order that punishment seems to reinforce.

Bargained Justice

2020 ◽  
pp. 155-177
Author(s):  
Albert Weale
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Bargaining Problem ◽  
Competitive Market ◽  
Original Position ◽  
Cooperative Action ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Surplus ◽  
Individual Choices

Gauthier’s Morals by Agreement assumes a laissez-faire original position, in which there is a perfectly competitive market where the equilibrium of individual choices is also economically optimal. Individuals are non-tuistically motivated and their reasoning is agent-relative. However, with externalities, optimality and equilibrium come apart and individuals have to be able to cooperate jointly with one another if their separate interests are to be advanced. Gauthier uses the theory of two-person positive sum bargaining to define the principles upon which the surplus secured by cooperative action is to be allocated. Gauthier’s own proposed formula for resolving the bargaining problem has been effectively criticized. However, his solution is more vulnerable to its assumption that the whole of the factor rent from labour should be included in the social surplus, and well as his neglect of Coase type solutions to the problem of externalities. In respect of public goods, his general theory would also suggest the adoption of Wicksellian taxes. However, his assumption that bargains based on non-tuistic motives can yield a theory of justice is defended.

Social Norms and Institutions

2019 ◽  
pp. 115-128
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Clark ◽  
Sarah Flèche ◽  
Richard Layard ◽  
Nattavudh Powdthavee ◽  
George Ward
Keyword(s):  
Social Support ◽  
Life Satisfaction ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Public Goods ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Ethical Norms ◽  
Gallup World Poll

This chapter turns to the Gallup World Poll to investigate the impacts of social norms and institutions upon a person's life-satisfaction. Social norms and institutions are public goods that affect all individuals living in a society. As such, their effects can only be studied by comparing life-satisfaction across societies, rather than across individuals. To that end, the chapter compares different nations. Countries differ in many ways apart from income and health. Perhaps the most important of these are in their ethical norms of behavior, networks of social support, openness and tolerance, personal freedom, the quality of government, equality, and levels of religiosity.

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