scholarly journals Kind or contented? An investigation of the gift exchange hypothesis in a natural field experiment in Colombia

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Bogliacino ◽  
Gianluca Grimalda ◽  
David Pipke
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Inequality Aversion ◽  
Market Clearing ◽  
Lower Productivity ◽  
Mixed Support ◽  
Natural Field Experiment ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Exchange Hypothesis ◽  
Triadic Relationship ◽  
Positive Effect

The gift exchange hypothesis postulates that workers reciprocate above market-clearing wages with above-minimum effort. This hypothesis has received mixed support in dyadic employer-worker relationships. We present a field-experimental test to assess this hypothesis in the context of a triadic relationship in which only one out of two workers receives a pay increase. We conjecture that inequality aversion motivations may thwart positive reciprocity motivations and analyze the interaction between such motivations theoretically. Across three treatments, the pay increase is justified to workers based on either relative merit or relative need or was arbitrary as no justification was offered. Two conditions in which either one or both workers receive a bonus serve as the reference. In contrast to the gift exchange hypothesis, we find that pay increases lead to a decrease in productivity. Such a decrease is most sizable in the condition where both workers receive the bonus. A post-diction of this result is that workers interpret the monetary bonus as a signal of the employer’s contentment with their effort, which makes them feel entitled to reduce their effort. In other treatments, receiving the pay increase while the coworker does not has a positive effect on productivity, especially when the pay increase is based on merit. This result is consistent with statusseekingpreferences rather than aversion against advantageous inequality. Conversely, not receiving the pay increase while the coworker does, leads to lower productivity, especially when the pay increase is assigned based on relative needs.

The gift of advice: communication in a bilateral gift exchange game

2013 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 443-477 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Cooper ◽  
John P. Lightle
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Gift

Market exits during the pandemic

2021 ◽  
pp. 113-133
Author(s):  
E. V. Bessonova ◽  
S. M. Myakisheva ◽  
A. N. Tsvetkova
Keyword(s):  
Growth Potential ◽  
Efficiency Enhancement ◽  
High Productivity ◽  
Young Firms ◽  
Lower Productivity ◽  
Fast Development ◽  
Negative Effect ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Substantial Rise ◽  
Stimulation Of

The new coronavirus pandemic has triggered an economic crisis different from other crises in the acuteness and non-uniformity of its impact on various sectors of the economy. This paper analyzes how the dynamics of firms entering and exiting the market have changed in this environment and which groups of firms have shown to be the most vulnerable to the negative effect of the crisis. Our analysis shows that the number of newly registered firms dwindled sharply in the period of the toughest restrictions imposed to curtail the infection spread in April — May 2020. The recovery which followed in the subsequent months has failed to compensate for the spring’s slump, which may suggest a “scarring impact” of the crisis. July and October 2020 saw a substantial rise in companies’ exits from the market. The crisis has hurt not only the hardest hit industries but also other areas of economic activity. Liquidations rose most extensively among young firms aged less than three years. Relatively higher productivity firms exited less often than lower productivity companies. This may suggest a “cleansing effect” of the crisis. But with the redundant labor being unable to move to more productive firms, the positive effect of the crisis may be brought to naught. Therefore, for the consequences of the crisis to be remedied, incentives should be provided to new firms’ entries and support for efficient companies, especially for young firms showing growth potential. Stimulation of growth in the number of high-productivity firms should go hand in hand with the creation of conditions for new entities’ fast development, expansion, and efficiency enhancement.

Rembrandt, Vermeer, and the Gift in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Zell
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Gift Giving ◽  
Dutch Art ◽  
Dutch Golden Age ◽  
Symbolic Economy ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Perspective

This book offers a new perspective on the art of the Dutch Golden Age by exploring the interaction between the gift's symbolic economy of reciprocity and obligation and the artistic culture of early modern Holland. Gifts of art were pervasive in seventeenth-century Europe and many Dutch artists, like their counterparts elsewhere, embraced gift giving to cultivate relations with patrons, art lovers, and other members of their social networks. Rembrandt also created distinctive works to function within a context of gift exchange, and both Rembrandt and Vermeer engaged the ethics of the gift to identify their creative labor as motivated by what contemporaries called a love of art

scholarly journals The meaning of the gift exchange concept for the system of education

2016 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 62-79
Author(s):  
Beatrix Wildt ◽  
Johannes Wildt
Keyword(s):  
Gift Exchange ◽  
The Gift

The Gift

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 272-282
Author(s):  
Rosalie Metro
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Shifting Identities

In this autoethnographic essay, I explore the role that gift exchange has played in building and sustaining my relationships with informants during my ethnographic research in Burma and its borderlands. I argue that gift exchange is not a byproduct of research but instead an integral part of it. Using Marcel Mauss's (1925/1954) seminal text The Gift as a theoretical framework, I weigh the items I've given against those I've received, detailing the emotional and material effects of this “potlatch” on social hierarchies, personal obligations, and shifting identities. This attempt to reckon with the ethical dimension of gift exchange is an invitation to other researchers to share their stories of giving and receiving.

Scott Cook. Understanding Commodity Cultures: Explorations in Economic Anthropology with Case Studies from Mexico. Lanham, Rowman & Littleford Publishers, Inc., 2004, xi, 349 pp.

2005 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 892-893 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Gregory
Keyword(s):  
Central America ◽  
Social Role ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Central American ◽  
Economic Anthropology ◽  
Market Exchange ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The People ◽  
The Gift ◽  
The Impact

Economic anthropology has two ‘sacred' field sites—one in Melanesia, the other in Central America—and the empirical data gathered from these sites has set the theoretical agenda for the sub-discipline. Malinowski conducted seminal fieldwork in both of these areas and the respective subjects of his investigations tells us much about the socio-economic concerns of people in Melanesia and Central America. His classic ethnography on the Kula exchange system of the Milne Bay area of Papua New Guinea, Argonauts of the Western Pacific, established Melanesia as the classic home of gift exchange. The postwar ethnographies have only served to confirm the passion Melanesians have for creating intricate forms of gift exchange: Andrew Strathern's The Rope of Moka, introduced us to the ties that bind the ‘big men' in the Highlands; Michael Young's Fighting with Food: Leadership, Values and Social Control in a Massim Society, challenged us to rethink the social role of food, and so on. These ethnographies, and many others like them, have provided the ethnographic base on which general theories of the gift have risen, Marilyn Strathern's The Gender of the Gift: Problems with Women and Problems with Society in Melanesia, being the best-known recent synthesis. The product of Malinowski's Central American fieldwork, Malinowski in Mexico: The Economics of a Mexican Market System (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), which he wrote with J. de la Fuente, has not had the impact of Argonauts, for a number of reasons, including the fact that an English translation of the 1957 Spanish edition took some twenty-five years to appear, and that his research, carried out in 1940, was not pioneering in the same ethnographic and theoretical way that Argonauts was. His Mexican work was part of a long tradition of American scholarship on the peasant-artisan commodity producers of this area. Commodity production and exchange is to the people of Central America what gift exchange is to Melanesians. However, the exchange of commodities in Central America is a not ceremonial ritual, but rather everyday reality that the people must undertake in order to survive. It has been this way for centuries, which is why Central American ethnographers have devoted so much time to describing and analyzing petty commodity reproduction. This is not to say that market exchange is unimportant for the people of Melanesia, but what sets Melanesia apart is that gift exchange has flourished under the impact of capitalism, and it is this question that commentators have tried to describe and explain. What then are the peculiar social conditions found in Central America that account for the specificities of the economy found there? What conceptual frameworks have economic anthropologists developed to come to terms with these facts?

Procuring Virgins, Performing Peace: Reconciliation through the Exchange of Women in Judges 21

2019 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 396-413
Author(s):  
Megan L. Case
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Gift Exchange ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Peaceful Resolution ◽  
The Gift

Abstract Rather than the commonly understood chaotic ending to Judges which illustrates the need for a king, the exchange of women in Judg 21 mediates the conflict between the Israelite tribes, creating a peaceful resolution to their civil war through the reestablishment of kinship loyalties. By applying anthropological concepts of gift exchange and alternative marriage practices to the final story of Judges (chs. 19-21), especially to the resolution of that story in ch. 21, we can see the rapprochement achieved through the gift of virgin brides which strengthens relations between the tribes. In light of this assessment, the monarchic refrain (Judg 17:6; 18:1; 19:1; and 21:25) was likely added during the latest stages of development to frame the final two stories to emphasize the need for a strong central government—kingship. Only with this refrain does the reconciliation of the warring tribes realized through the traffic of women appear insufficient.

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