Trust, Reciprocity and Institutional Design: Lessons from Behavioural Economics

Trust and reciprocity are the bond of society (Locke), but economic agents are both self-interested and intrinsically untrustworthy. These assumptions impair severely economists' accounts of social relationships. The paper examines strategies to escape this paradox by enlarging our conception of rationality: the assumptions of self-interest and consequentialism are critically discussed as well as relational behavioural principles (e.g. trust and reciprocity). The implications of this enlarged kind of rationality are particularly important for agency theory. The paper analyses, within this framework, the working of two different kinds of incentive mechanisms, namely intra-personal and interpersonal, and discusses experimental results that emphasise the empirical relevance of the latter. Besides providing a more descriptively adequate picture of agency, such mechanisms have important normative implications. In this respect some of the conditions that affect the process of accumulation and erosion of trust and social capital are explored. The tension between rules and trust turns out to be not inescapable, though it calls for a changing in the designing logic of institutions and contracts. I shall discuss what are the changes needed in order to implement a trust-enhancing activity of institutional design.Incentives; reciprocity; trust; crowding-out; institutional design

Human Neurological Development: Past, Present and Future

Neurological development is considered as the major human potential. Vision, vestibular function, intelligence, and nutrition are discussed as well as the treatment of neurological disfunctions, coma, and convulsive seizures

To Give or Not To Give? Equity, Efficiency and Altruistic Behavior in a Survey-Based Experiment

This paper presents the results of a survey-based experiment on the role of equity and efficiency for altruistic behavior. Using simple binary decisions for a representative pool of subjects, we find that both equity and efficiency are relevant for the decision to give. However, contrary to the findings in several laboratory experiments, our results indicate that equity plays a major role for altruistic behavior. Differences in relative payoffs have a significant effect on the decision to give. When giving is not costly, more than half of the subjects prefer equal payoffs to a socially efficient but unequal allocation. When giving is Pareto-improving, half the subjects choose to sacrifice a higher payoff in order to avoid payoff inequality. We also find that preferences, as revealed by experimental choices, are largely consistent with reported pro-social activities, while only weakly related to self-reported well-being.Altruism, Inequality-Aversion, SocialWelfare, Envy, Large-Scale Experiment

Motivazioni, Procedure e Filtri: strumenti innovativi di sviluppo organizzativo

The paper discusses the theoretical foundations of an incentive provision system based both on material and immaterial (moral and social) incentives. We focus on the normative implications streaming from an enlargement of the idea of rationality traditionally applied to the analysis of strategic choices: when self-interest, in fact, is supplemented with behavioral principles such as reciprocity, trust, altruism and intrinsic motivation, the way incentives have to be designed and provided should change consequently. We first describe the functioning of such principles and then analyze in some depth the way those factors can be used to favor an efficient matching between principal and agents endowed with functional preferences in presence of asymmetric information. Such an efficient matching produces positive effects on the effort provided by agents which, in turn, positively affects organizational efficiency. This process applies with particular cogence to economic environments characterized by vocational workers (civil economy), where intrinsic motivations are a crucial determinant of workers morale. Those settings are affected by social strategic complementarity that may yield to pareto-rankable multiple equilibria. We introduce instruments that should favor the functioning of the matching process and advocate their implementation to foster an internally-driven sectorial development process.Fallimenti del Mercato; Fallimenti Stato; economia civile; Incentivi relazionali; Giustizia distributiva; avversione iniquita'

We can be heroes: trust and resilience in corrupted economic environments

We use an original variant of the standard trust game, in order to study the effect of corruption on trust and trustworthiness. In this game, both the trustor and the trustee know that part of the surplus they can generate may be captured by a third “corrupted” player under different expected costs of audit and prosecution. We find slightly higher trustor’s giving in presence of corruption, matched by a significant effect of excess reciprocity from the trustee. Both the trustor and the trustee expect on average corruption acting as a tax, inelastic to changes in the risk of corruptor audit. Expectations are correct for the inelasticity assumption, and for the actual value of the “corruption tax”. Our experimental findings lead to the rejection of four standard hypotheses based on purely self-regarding preferences. We discuss how the apparently paradoxical excess reciprocity effect is consistent with the cultural role of heroes in history where examples of commendable giving were used to stimulate emulation of the ordinary people. Our results suggest that the excess reciprocity component of the trustee makes trustor’s excess giving a rational and effective strategy

Trust and trustworthiness in corrupted economic environments

We use an original variant of the standard trust game to study the effects of corruption on trust and trustworthiness. In this game, both the trustor and the trustee know that part of the surplus they can generate may be captured by a third “corrupted” player under different expected costs of audit and prosecution. We find a slightly higher trustor’s giving in the presence of corruption, matched by a significant excess of reciprocity from the trustee. Both the trustor and the trustee expect, on average, corruption to act as a tax, inelastic to changes in the probability of corruption prosecution. Expectations are correct for the inelasticity assumption and for the actual value of the “corruption tax”. Our experimental findings lead to the rejection of four standard hypotheses based on purely self-regarding preferences. We discuss how the apparently paradoxical excess reciprocity effect is consistent with the cultural role of heroes in history, where examples of commendable giving have been used to stimulate emulation of ordinary people. Our results suggest that the excess reciprocity component of the trustee makes the trustor’s excess giving a rational and effective strategy

Rottura traumatica della trachea nel gatto: due casi

La rottura tracheale traumatiche nel gatto è riportata sporadicamente in letteratura. In questo studio vengono riportati due casi, uno in cui i sintomi clinici risultano evidenti e gravi subito dopo il trauma, l'altro in cui i sintomi si sono manifestati dopo circa ventisei giorni dal presunto trauma. I due casi sono accomunati dall'assenza di segni radiografici indiretti quali pneumotorace, pneumomediastino ed enfisema sottocutaneo. I riscontri radiografici e tomografici includono l'assenza di soluzione di continuità della parete tracheale con un sensibile restringimento del diametro tracheale nel primo caso e nel secondo caso uno “pseudodiverticolo” disposto tra due porzioni tracheali stenotiche. Grazie ad una tecnica chirurgica adeguata ed un'attenta gestione anestetica la prognosi di entrambi i gatti è stata eccellente. La rottura tracheale nel gatto è una patologia rara, ma che deve essere sempre tenuta in considerazione nelle diagnosi differenziali dei pazienti dispnoici, per poterne ricercare i segni radiologici difficilmente identificabili ed approntare una chirurgia d'elezione

Il limite permeabile. La costruzione di uno spazio intersoggettivo condiviso nelle relazioni strategiche

This article focuses on the relational aspects of strategic interactions. First, we highlight how some of the limitations of the classical theory of games can hinder a deeper understanding of two fundamental dimensions of interpersonal relations, which are essential to our social epistemology: the mentalizing and empathizing processes. Secondly, we present the results of a series of experiments that stress the role of these two elements in the realm of strategic interactions. Finally, we argue that, by conceptualizing a hierarchy of higher order beliefs, psychological game theory seems to constitute a promising step forward towards the introduction of relational elements in the motivational structure of social agents and in the understanding of the intersubjective space we build and share when interacting with others