Herbert Gintis

Publication List Details

Period

1969 - 2009

Number

135

Co-Authors

WALRASIAN ECONOMICS IN RETROSPECT* (2009)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Two basic tenets of the Walrasian model, behavior based on self-interested exogenous preferences and complete and costless contracting have recently come under critical scrutiny. First, social norms...

Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 16, Number 3—Summer 2002—Pages 3–30 The Inheritance of Inequality (2008)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

People differ markedly in their views concerning the appropriate role of government in reducing economic inequality. Self-interest and differences in values explain part of the con � ict over...

THE DYNAMICS OF GENERAL EQUILIBRIUM* (2008)

Herbert Gintis

The Walrasian general equilibrium model is the centrepiece of modern economic theory, but progress in understanding its dynamical properties has been meagre. This article shows that the instability...

Homo reciprocans: A Research Initiative on the Origins, Dimensions, and Policy Implications of Reciprocal Fairness (2007)

Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis

Experimental economists and other social scientists have discovered an important form of human behavior that has been inadequately analyzed by behavioral scientists. In public goods, ultimatum, and...

The moral rights of the authors and the editors have been asserted (2007)

Series Erik, Olin Wright, John E. Roemer, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Archon Fung, ...

The Real Utopias Project embraces a tension between dreams and practice. It is founded on the belief that what is pragmatically possible is not fixed independently of our imaginations, but is itself...

Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior and Earnings (2007)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Melissa Osborne

Suppose there is a principal-agent relationship between employer and employee in which effort is not contractible, but is elicited through employer incentive mechanisms. We term preferences that...

Power (2007)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

We consider the exercise of power in competitive markets for goods, labour and credit. We offer a definition of power and show that if contracts are incomplete it may be exercised either in...

Towards a Unity of the Human Behavioral Sciences (2006)

Gintis, Herbert

Despite their distinct objects of study, the human behavioral sciences all include models of individual human behavior. Unity in the behavioral sciences requires that there be a common underlying...

The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange (2006)

Gintis, Herbert

This paper analyzes the dynamics of completely decentralized bilateral exchange. In such a framework, neither money nor prices as public information exist. Rather, prices represent an agent's barter...

The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange (2006)

Gintis, Herbert

This paper analyzes the dynamics of completely decentralized bilateral exchange. In such a framework, neither money nor prices as public information exist. Rather, prices represent an agent's barter...

The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange (2006)

Gintis, Herbert

This paper analyzes the dynamics of completely decentralized bilateral exchange. In such a framework, neither money nor prices as public information exist. Rather, prices represent an agent's barter...

The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange (2006)

Gintis, Herbert

This paper analyzes the dynamics of completely decentralized bilateral exchange. In such a framework, neither money nor prices as public information exist. Rather, prices represent an agent's barter...

The Local Best Response Criterion: A New Approach to Equilibrium Refinement (2006)

Herbert Gintis

The standard refinement criteria for extensive form games, including subgame perfection, perfection, sequentiality, and properness, are both too strong, since they reject important classes of...

“Economic man” in cross-cultural perspective: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies (2005)

Henrich, Joseph, Boyd, Robert, Bowles, Samuel, Camerer, Colin, Fehr, Ernst, Gintis, Herbert, ...

Researchers from across the social sciences have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in hundreds of experiments from around the world. This...

Journal of Economic Literature Classifications: D51—Exchange and Production Economies D58—Computable and Other Applied General Equilibrium Economies (2005)

Herbert Gintis

This paper derives the price system in a model of decentralized bilateral exchange. Out of equilibrium, prices are individual subjective estimates of payoff-maximizing exchange ratios, and hence are...

The Origins of Human Cooperation (2003)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Biological explanations of cooperation are based on kin altruism, reciprocal altruism, and mutualism, all of which apply to human and nonhuman species alike. But human cooperation is based in part on...

Persistent Parochialism: Trust and Exclusion in Ethnic Networks (2003)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Avner Greif, Barkley Rosser, Leigh Tesfatsion, Martin Weitzman, ...

Decentralized groups such as close knit residential neighborhoods and ethnically linked businesses often achieve high levels of cooperation while also engaging in exclusionary practices that we call...

The inheritance of inequality (2002)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Anders Bjorklund, Kerwin Kofi Charles, Bradford Delong, Williams Dickens, ...

People differ markedly in their views concerning the appropriate role of government in reducing economic inequality. Self-interest and differences in values explain part of the conflict over...

The inheritance of inequality (2002)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

People differ markedly in their views concerning the appropriate role of government in reducing economic inequality. Self-interest and differences in values explain part of the conflict over...

Social capital and community governance (2002)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Social capital generally refers to trust, concern for ones associates, a willingness to live by the norms of one’s community and to punish those who do not. While essential to good governance,...

Social Capital and Community Governance (2002)

Samuel Bowles And, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Social capital generally refers to trust, concern for ones associates, a willingness to live by the norms of one's community and to punish those who do not. While essential to good governance,...

In search of Homo economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies (2001)

Henrich, Joseph, Boyd, Robert, Bowles, Samuel, Camerer, Colin F., Fehr, Ernst, Gintis, Herbert, ...

We can summarize our results as follows. First, the canonical model is not supported in any society studied. Second, there is considerably more behavioral variability across groups than had been...

In search of Homo economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies (2001)

Henrich, Joseph, Boyd, Robert, Bowles, Samuel, Camerer, Colin F., Fehr, Ernst, Gintis, Herbert, ...

We can summarize our results as follows. First, the canonical model is not supported in any society studied. Second, there is considerably more behavioral variability across groups than had been...

Schooling in capitalist America revisited. Retrieved November 20, 2004, from http://www.umass.edu/preferen/gintis/soced.pdf Callinicos (2001)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

The project that eventually resulted in the publication of Schooling in Capitalist America (1976) began in 1968, stimulated by the then raging academic debates and social conflicts about the...

The Inheritance of Economic Status: Education, Class and Genetics (2001)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

The perpetuation of a family’s position in the distribution of income from parents to children reflects the genetic and cultural transmission of individual traits, as well as the inheritance of...

In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-Scale Societies (2001)

Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, ...

Recent investigations have uncovered large, consistent deviations from the predictions of the textbook representation of Homo economicus (Alvin E. Roth et al., 1991; Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter,...

The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity (2000)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

A number of outstanding puzzles in economics may be resolved by recognizing that where members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, agents may obey the norm and punish its...

Risk Aversion, Insurance, and the Efficiency-Equality Tradeoff (2000)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Under conditions of informational asymmetry, redistributing the property rights may improve work incentives but lead to an inefficient choice of entrepreneurial risk. We present a model in which...

Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality (2000)

Gintis, Herbert

Human groups maintain a high level of sociality despite a low level of relatedness among group members. The behavioral basis of this sociality remains in doubt. This paper reviews the evidence for an...

Optimal Parochialism: The Dynamics of Trust and Exclusion in Networks (2000)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Networks such as ethnic credit associations, close-knit residential neighborhoods, 'old boy'networks, and ethnically linked businesses play an important role in economic life but have been little...

Walrasian Economics in Retrospect (2000)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Two basic tenets of theWalrasian model, behavior based on self-interested exogenous preferences and complete and costless contracting have recently come under critical scrutiny. First, social norms...

Showing That You Care: The Evolution of Health Altruism (2000)

Robin Hanson, Joseph Farrell, Frank Forman, Richard Frank, Tim Freeman, Paul Gertler, ...

Human behavior regarding medicine seems strange; assumptions and models that seem workable in other areas seem less so in medicine. Perhaps we need to rethink the basics. Toward this end, I have...

Wealth Inequality, Wealth Constraints and Economic Performance (1999)

Bardhan, Pranab, Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

When asymmetry or non-verifiability of information, or non-excludability of users, makes contracts incomplete or unenforceable, and where for these and other reasons there are impediments to...

The human side of economic analysis: Economic environments and the evolution of norms and preferences (1998)

Herbert Gintis, Paul Romer

From its inception conventional economic theory was designed to deal with the production and consumption of marketable goods and services. With the growth of the welfare state and the need for demand...

Optimal parochialism: The dynamics of trust and exclusion in networks. Working (1998)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Networks such as ethnic credit associations, close-knit residential neighborhoods, `old boy'networks, and ethnically linked businesses play an important role in economic life but have been...

The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity (1998)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Where genetically unrelated members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, agents may obey the norm and punish its violators, even when this behavior cannot be justified in terms...

Mutual monitoring in teams: the effects of residual claimancy and reciprocity (1998)

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Monitoring by peers in work teams, credit associations, partnerships, local commons situations, and residential neighborhoods is often an effective means of attenuating incentive problems. Most...

La instrucción escolar en la América capitalista : la reforma educativa y las contradicciones de la vida económica (1981)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Traducción de: Schooling in capitalist america. Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life

La instrucción escolar en la América capitalista : la reforma educativa y las contradicciones de la vida económica (1981)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Traducción de: Schooling in Capitalist America: Educational Reform and the Contradictions of Economic Life

Schooling in capitalism America : Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life (1976)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Estudio sobre la forma en que el capitalismo ha influido en la educación impartida en los Estados Unidos de América. Contenido: las contradicciones de la reforma educativa liberal, educación y la...

Schooling in capitalism America : Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life / S. Bowles, H. Gintis. (1976)

Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert

Estudio sobre la forma en que el capitalismo ha influido en la educación impartida en los Estados Unidos de América. Contenido: las contradicciones de la reforma educativa liberal, educación y la...

Crítica de Ivan Illich (1975)

Gintis, Herbert, Jordá, Joaquín (tr.), González Trejo, Horacio (tr.), Navarro, Vicente

Traducción de: Critique de l'Illishisme; The Industrialization of Fetishism or the Fetishism of Industrialization

Crítica de Ivan Illich / Herbert Gintis (1972)

Gintis, Herbert

Traducción de: Critique de I'Illichisme

The evolution of altruistic punishment

Boyd, Robert, Gintis, Herbert, Bowles, Samuel, Richerson, Peter J.

Both laboratory and field data suggest that people punish noncooperators even in one-shot interactions. Although such “altruistic punishment” may explain the high levels of cooperation in human...

Mutual Monitoring in Teams: Theory and Experimental Evidence on the Importance of Reciprocity

Jeffery Carpenter, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Monitoring by peers is often an effective means of attenuating incentive problems. Most explanations of the efficacy of mutual monitoring rely either on small group size or on a version of the Folk...

The evolution of altruistic punishment

Boyd, Robert, Gintis, Herbert, Bowles, Samuel, Richerson, Peter J.

Both laboratory and field data suggest that people punish noncooperators even in one-shot interactions. Although such “altruistic punishment” may explain the high levels of cooperation in human...

Economic Man in Cross-Cultural Perspective: Behavioral Experiments in Fifteen Small-Scale Societies

Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, ...

Experimental behavioral scientists have found consistent deviations from the predictions of the canonical model of self-interest in over a hundred experiments from around the world. Prior research...

The Puzzle of Prosociality

Herbert Gintis

How is cooperation among large numbers of unrelated individuals sustained? Cooperation generally requires altruism, where individuals take actions that are group-beneficial but personally costly. Why...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Altruism: Gene-Culture Coevolution, and the Internalization of Norms

Herbert Gintis

The internalization of norms refers to the tendency of human beings to adopt social norms from parents (vertical transmission) or influential elders (oblique transmission). Authority rather than...

Cooperation, Reciprocity and Punishment in Fifteen Small-scale Societies

Joseph Henrich, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, ...

Recent investigations have uncovered large, consistent deviations from the predictions of the textbook representation of Homo Economicus: in addition to their own material payoffs, many experimental...

The Inheritance of Economic Status: Education, Class, and Genetics

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

The perpetuation of a family's position in the distribution of income from parents to children reflects the genetic and cultural transmission of individual traits, as well as the inheritance of group...

Incentive-Enhancing Preferences: Personality, Behavior and Earnings

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Melissa Osborne

Suppose there is a principal-agent relationship between employer and employee in which effort is not contractible, but is elicited through employer incentive mechanisms. We term preferences that...

Social Capital and Community Governance

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Social capital generally refers to trust, concern for one's associates, a willingness to live by the norms of one's community and to punish those who do not. While essential to good governance, these...

The Evolution of Reciprocal Preferences

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

A number of outstanding puzzles in economics may be resolved by recognizing that where members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, agents may obey the norm and punish its...

Costly Signaling and Cooperation

Eric Alden Smith, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

We propose an explanation of cooperation among unrelated members of a social group, in which providing group benefits evolves because it constitutes an honest signal of the member's quality as a...

Optimal Parochialism: The Dynamics of Trust and Exclusion in Networks

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Networks such as ethnic credit associations, close-knit residential neighborhoods, "old boy' networks, and ethnically linked businesses play an important role in economic life but have been little...

Power

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

We consider the exercise of power in competitive markets for goods, labour and credit. We offer a definition of power and show that if contracts are incomplete it may be exercised either in...

Power

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

We consider the exercise of power in competitive markets for goods, labour and credit. We offer a definition of power and show that if contracts are incomplete it may be exercised either in...

A Markov Model of Production, Trade, and Money: Theory and Artificial Life Simulation

Herbert Gintis

The paper generalizes the Kiyotaki-Wright trade model by treating the trading period as a finite game, so Nash's theorem can be used to prove the existence of equilibrium, and by treating the economy...

Introduction to Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Melissa Osborne Groves

Is the United States "the land of equal opportunity" or is the playing field tilted in favor of those whose parents are wealthy, well educated, and white? If family background is important in getting...

Strong Reciprocity and Human Sociality

Herbert Gintis

Human groups maintain a high level of sociality despite a low level of relatedness among group members. The behavioral basis of this sociality remains in doubt. This paper reviews the evidence for an...

Risk Aversion, Insurance, and the Efficiency-Equality Tradeoff

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Under conditions of informational asymmetry, redistributing the property rights may improve work incentives but lead to an inefficient choice of entrepreneurial risk. We present a model in which...

Walrasian Economics in Retrospect

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Two basic tenets of theWalrasian model, behavior based on self-interested exogenous preferences and complete and costless contracting have recently come under critical scrutiny. First, social norms...

The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

A number of outstanding puzzles in economics may be resolved by recognizing that where members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, agents may obey the norm and punish its...

Optimal Parochialism: The Dynamics of Trust and Exclusion in Networks

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Networks such as ethnic credit associations, close-knit residential neighborhoods, 'old boy' networks, and ethnically linked businesses play an important role in economic life but have been little...

The Determinants of Earnings: A Behavioral Approach

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis, Melissa Osborne

We survey the determinants of earnings and propose a framework for understanding labor market success. We suggest that the advantages of the children of successful parents go considerably beyond the...

The Dynamics of General Equilibrium

Herbert Gintis

The Walrasian general equilibrium model is the centrepiece of modern economic theory, but progress in understanding its dynamical properties has been meagre. This article shows that the instability...

Strong reciprocity and the welfare state

Fong, Christina M., Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert, S. Kolm, Jean Mercier Ythier

We explore the contribution of reciprocity and other non selfish motives to the political viability of the modern welfare state. In the advanced economies, a substantial fraction of total income is...

Mutual Monitoring in Teams: Theory and Experimental Evidence on the Importance of Reciprocity

Jeffrey Carpenter, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Monitoring by peers is often an effective means of attenuating incentive problems. Most explanations of the efficacy of mutual monitoring rely either on small group size or on a version of the Folk...

Wealth inequality, wealth constraints and economic performance

Bardhan, Pranab, Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert, A.B. Atkinson, F. Bourguignon

Where such behaviors as risk-taking and hard work are not subject to complete contracts, some distributions of assets (for instance the widespread use of tenancy) may preclude efficient contractual...

Wealth Inequality, Wealth Constraints and Economic Performance

Pranab Bardhan, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

When asymmetry or non-verifiability of information, or non-excludability of users, makes contracts incomplete or unenforceable, and where for these and other reasons there are impediments to...

Wealth Inequality, Wealth Constraints and Economic Performance

Pranab Bardhan, Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

When asymmetry or non-verifiability of information, or non- excludability of users, makes contracts incomplete or unenforceable, and where for these and other reasons there are impediments to...

Social Capital and Community Governance

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

"Community governance" is the set of small group social interactions that, with market and state, determine economic outcomes. We argue (i) community governance addresses some common market and state...

Walrasian Economics In Retrospect

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Two basic tenets of the Walrasian model, behavior based on self-interested exogenous preferences and complete and costless contracting have recently come under critical scrutiny. First, social norms...

The Emergence of a Price System from Decentralized Bilateral Exchange

Herbert Gintis

This paper analyzes the dynamics of completely decentralized bilateral exchange. In such a framework, neither money nor prices as public information exist. Rather, prices represent an agent's barter...

A Markov Model of Production, Trade, and Money: Theory and Artificial Life Simulation

Herbert Gintis

The paper generalizes the Kiyotaki-Wright trade model by treating the trading period as a finite game, so Nash's theorem can be used to prove the existence of equilibrium, and by treating the economy...

The Evolution of Strong Reciprocity

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Where genetically unrelated members of a group benefit from mutual adherence to a social norm, agents may obey the norm and punish its violators, even when this behavior cannot be justified in terms...

Mutual Monitoring in Teams: The Effects of Residual Claimancy and Reciprocity

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

Monitoring by peers in work teams, credit associations, partner- ships, local commons situations, and residential neighborhoods is often an effective means of attenuating incentive problems. Most...

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life

Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert T. Boyd, Ernst Fehr

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests presents an innovative synthesis of research in different disciplines to argue that cooperation stems not from the stereotypical selfish agent acting out of...

Reciprocity, Self-Interest and the Welfare State

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

In the advanced economies, a substantial fraction of total income is regularly transferred from the better off to the less well off, with the approval of the electorate. Economists have for the most...

Reciprocity, Self-Interest and the Welfare State

Samuel Bowles, Herbert Gintis

In the advanced economies, a substantial fraction of total income is regularly transferred from the better off to the less well off, with the approval of the electorate. Economists have for the most...

The local best response criterion: An epistemic approach to equilibrium refinement

Gintis, Herbert

The standard refinement criteria for extensive form games, including subgame perfect, perfect, perfect Bayesian, sequential, and proper, reject important classes of reasonable Nash equilibria and...

Strong reciprocity and team production: Theory and evidence

Carpenter, Jeffrey, Bowles, Samuel, Gintis, Herbert, Hwang, Sung-Ha

Punishment of shirkers is often an effective means of attenuating incentive problems and sustaining coordination in work teams. Explanations of the motivation to punish generally rely either on small...