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Building a reputation for trustworthiness: Experimental evidence on the role of the feedback rate Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2024-02-16 Ruohuang Jiao, Wojtek Przepiorka, Vincent Buskens
In 25 years, research on reputation-based online markets has produced robust evidence on the existence of the so-called reputation effect, that is the positive relation between online traders’ reputations and these traders’ market success in terms of sales and prices. However, there is an ongoing debate on what the size of the reputation effect means. We argue that the rate of truthful feedback that
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Persistent and self-perpetuating political differences between neighbouring communities Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2024-02-13 Afiq bin Oslan
The branch of social science known as “legacy studies” has identified the stubborn persistence of political differences, such as levels of prejudice and trust, even between communities that are geographically proximate and otherwise largely similar. The theoretical focus of this literature has largely been on establishing the origin of political divergence. I add instead to theories explaining why
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Does improved upward social mobility foster frustration and conflict? A large-scale online experiment testing Boudon’s model Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2024-01-04 Joël Berger, Andreas Diekmann, Stefan Wehrli
The rise of populism has reignited scholarly interest in the paradox of societal advancement leading to frustration and social tension. Globalization and digitalization have increased social opportunities for parts of the population, but a substantial portion of society feels disadvantaged, resulting in discontent. This study, rooted in Boudon’s model of relative deprivation, examines the mechanisms
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Trust, reputation, and the value of promises in online auctions of used goods Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-05-15 Judith Kas, Rense Corten, Arnout van de Rijt
Buyers in online markets pay higher prices to sellers who promise a high-quality product in auctions of used goods, even though they cannot assess quality until after the sale. The principal argume...
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Selectively liberal? social change and attitudes towards homosexual relations in the UK Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-04-25 Alan Collins, Stephen Drinkwater, Colin Jennings
This paper presents a model to identify why, for some, the expression of liberal attitudes towards the LGBT population may be strategic rather than sincere. We show that the British population disp...
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Self-Interest, prosociality, and the moral cognition of markets: A comparative analysis of the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Alberto Acerbi, Pier Luigi Sacco
In this paper, we perform a text analysis of Adam Smith’s two books, the Theory of Moral Sentiments and the Wealth of Nations, to better characterize their highly disputed differences in terms of m...
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Lethality and deterrence in affairs of honor: The case of the antebellum U.S. south Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Tom Ahn, Paul Shea, Jeremy Sandford
Duels remained an important and surprisingly common means of settling disputes in the American South until after the Civil War. We examine two historical puzzles. First, why did dueling persist as ...
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Can misfortune lead to dishonesty? Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-03-30 Claire Mouminoux
This article focuses on why people may become dishonest when they are unfortunate. Studies have shown that dishonesty increases in unfortunate or unfair situations, suggesting that misfortune could...
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Are upper-secondary track decisions risky? Evidence from Sweden on the assumptions of risk-aversion models Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-03-12 Anton B Andersson, Carlo Barone, Martin Hällsten
Relative risk aversion (RRA) models explain social class inequalities in education with risk avoidance, i.e., the risky choice assumption (RCA). This assumption concerns risks related to more ambit...
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The king’s gambit: Rationalizing the fall of the templars Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-03-02 Gabriel F Benzecry, Marcus Shera
What can the fall of the Knights Templars teach us about medieval institutions? We highlight that the Templar’s annihilation results from the institutional shock of Pope Clement V’s decision to rel...
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Does money strengthen our social ties? longitudinal evidence of lottery winners Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-02-21 Joan Costa-Font, Nattavudh Powdthavee
We study the effect of lottery wins on the strength of social ties and its different types, including support networks, in the United Kingdom. On average, we find that winning more in the lottery i...
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Camouflage: A dominant reaction to worsening conditions Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-02-15 Bruno S Frey
Individuals choose camouflage as a dominant response when a state’s political conditions worsen, particularly when a democracy turns authoritarian. Individuals hide their private preferences to sur...
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Nudge in perspective: A systematic literature review on the ethical issues with nudging Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2023-01-30 Paul Kuyer, Bert Gordijn
In this article, we systematically review the literature on the ethics of nudging. Since the publication of the book Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in 2008, a rich literature has been de...
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Political inequality in participation index - a gini-based measure of inequalities in political participation Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-11-30 Pál Susánszky, Róbert Somogyi, Gergely Tóth
Measuring inequalities in political participation across social groups is a challenging task as participation is typically coded in dummy variables. For instance, social scientists record whether t...
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Understanding the stickiness in high-SES students’ educational expectations: The role of private schools Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Manuel T Valdés
Different studies have observed that performance is a worse predictor of educational expectations among high-SES students. This result has been referred to as stickiness in high-SES students’ expec...
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Voting behavior as social action: Habits, norms, values, and rationality in electoral participation Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-11-26 Rolf Becker
The aim of the study is to contribute, theoretically and empirically, to an improved understanding of the social processes and mechanisms generating a citizen’s decisions regarding electoral partic...
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Socioeconomic status, reputation, and interpersonal trust in peer-to-peer markets: Evidence from an online experiment Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-10-27 Marijn A Keijzer, Rense Corten
Online peer-to-peer markets decentralize the distribution of resources, creating a trust problem in economic exchange on the internet. Individual characteristics of trustees—as determinants for bei...
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Social capital and mobility: An experimental study Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-10-21 Ondřej Krčál, Štěpán Mikula, Rostislav Staněk
Theoretical models of local social capital predict that communities may find themselves in one of two equilibria: one with a high level of local social capital and low migration or one with a low l...
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The specialization of informal social control in a selective community: Fighting in the National Hockey League from 1947 to 2019 Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-10-09 Antonio D Sirianni
Decentralized sanctioning arises from a demand for governance that is not adequately provided by the state or another strong and centralized institution. While the dynamics of collective action and...
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Regulation and state capacity Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-09-30 Arjun Chowdhury
While one might expect states with low capacity to regulate less than states with high capacity, this is not supported by evidence, leaving open the possibility of rent-seeking. I use the example o...
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Hostile-emotional excess of zeal in public social media: A case study of an online firestorm against an organization Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-09-29 Katja Rost, Lea Stahel
Caused by perceived norm violations, online firestorms confront organizations with large volumes of hostile-emotional comments on public social media leading to a damage to reputation or the cancel...
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Buildings and Welfare Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-09-26 Mats Ekman
If welfare stigma depends upon social attitudes, only the neediest apply for welfare when they can more easily be seen to do so. Using GoogleMaps' ‘StreetView' feature, this article finds that the ...
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The social production of property Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-09-09 David Willer, Pamela Emanuelson
This paper investigates two forms of property as a social phenomenon and finds the Property Right Paradigm of economics to be wrongly conceived. Introducing new formulations for property reveals th...
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Support for Social Policies: Focusing on Effects of Group Belonging Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Naoki Sudo
This study aims to elucidate the structure of support for social policies (redistribution and free competition), focusing on the role of community interests (especially demographic decline). To thi...
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Divisiveness, splintering, and the rational interpretation of text Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-07-15 Jacqueline Joslyn
In a historical case study, this paper explores the mechanisms by which the rational interpretation of written text can produce divisiveness and splintering. The mechanisms of division are derived ...
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Towards a nuanced understanding of anti-immigration sentiment in the welfare state – a program specific analysis of welfare preferences Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-05-30 Matthias Diermeier, Judith Niehues
The literature on immigration and the welfare state describes a trade-off between immigration and welfare support. We argue for a more nuanced view of welfare chauvinism that accounts for different...
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Coherence between theory and policy in Nudge and Boost: Is it relevant for evidence-based policy-making? Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-05-25 Daphne Truijens
Behavioral policies Nudge and Boost are often advocated as good candidates for evidence-based policy. Nudges present or “frame” options in a way that trigger people’s decision-making flaws and stee...
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Intergenerational class mobility in industrial and post-industrial societies: Towards a general theory Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-05-25 Erzsébet Bukodi, John H Goldthorpe
A large body of often rather complex findings on intergenerational social mobility has by now come into existence but theoretical development has not kept pace. In this paper, focusing specifically...
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Verbal interaction in a social dilemma Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-05-25 Zoë Adams, Agata Ludwiczak, Devyani Sharma, Magda Osman
This study presents the first sociolinguistic examination of communication in a social dilemma. 90 participants (18 groups of 5) completed a modified public goods game with 2 rounds: an effort-base...
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Feudal bargain in Prague: The rise, spread, and fall of craft guilds Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-04-11 David Dolejší
Craft guilds were created as a response to certain problems associated with raising royal revenues and securing basic public services in Prague during the medieval and early modern periods. The the...
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Black-White incentive inequality for college persistence Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-04-08 Dirk Witteveen, Paul Attewell
Despite similar educational aspirations, black students persist in higher education at much lower rates than white undergraduates. This paper advances a theoretical explanation for the racial gap i...
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Party competition and the structuring of party preferences by the left-right dimension Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-04-06 Holger Reinermann
There is a wide selection of theoretical approaches to explain preferences citizens have for political parties, among them the spatial model of party competition in which voters choose based on proximity in a policy space, such as the left-right dimension. However, it has not ultimately prevailed against its competitors. Thus, a literature has emerged that allows for heterogeneity, asking whose preferences
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Emergence of and compliance with new social norms: The example of the COVID crisis in Germany Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-04-06 Andreas Diekmann
In crisis situations, people have to change their behavior. A collective learning process begins and new patterns of order emerge. Externalities of behavior lead to the emergence of new social norm...
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Parental time preferences and educational choices: The role of children’s gender and of social origin Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-01-23 Daniela Bellani, Luis Ortiz-Gervasi
This paper contributes to the literature on Relative Risk Aversion theory in two ways: first, by considering that the effect of time preferences may differ according to both children’s gender and social origin; second, by exploring this possibility for different educational outcomes: upper secondary school choices and university enrollment. We use data of the Survey of Household Income and Wealth,
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Mine or ours? Unintended framing effects in dictator games Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2022-01-11 Andreas Bergh, Philipp C Wichardt
This paper reports results from a classroom dictator game comparing the effects of three different sets of standard instructions. The results show that seemingly small and typically unreported differences in standard instructions induce different perceptions regarding entitlement and ownership of the money to be distributed, and that these perceptions influence behaviour. Less is given when the task
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The Peace of God Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-12-27 Andrew Young
Scholars have argued that the politically fractured landscape of medieval Western Europe was foundational to the evolution of constitutionalism and rule of law. In making this argument, Salter and Young (2019) have recently emphasized that the constellation of political property rights in the High Middle Ages was polycentric and hierarchical; holders of those rights were residual claimants to the returns
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A formal model of street-level bureaucracy Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-09-13 Ahrum Chang
Different from a classic Weberian bureaucracy, public service bureaucrats directly interact with citizens at the frontlines of government. These first responders use their discretion to meet some citizens’ needs but deliberately overlook the other clients. What lies beneath the street-level bureaucrats’ behavior in their contacts with citizens? This study develops a model to explain how street-level
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A picture of regret: An empirical investigation of post-Brexit referendum survey data Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-08-02 Alan Collins, Adam Cox, Gianpiero Torrisi
Whilst the properties of decision regret have been widely explored in experimental and game theoretic studies, the empirical features of regret from large-scale ‘binary decision’ national events in practice have garnered less scrutiny. This study is an empirical investigation of novel survey data reporting ‘Brexit’ voting choices and expressions of a desire to change voting choices post-referendum
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Social movements and exchanges: Sketch of a theory Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-07-27 Nicolás M Somma
Using social exchange theory, this article presents a new theory for understanding the strategic choices made by social movement leaders—the “movement exchanges” theory. It looks at how leaders engage in exchanges of valued rewards with constituencies, institutional political players, bystander publics, and voluntary organizations. Leaders receive from these players important rewards (like committed
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Editorial transition at Rationality and Society: A note from the incoming editor Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-07-23 Andreas Flache
Rationality and Society was founded by editor James S Coleman in 1989. Today, 32 years later, the rational action paradigm continues to be an intellectual point of reference appealing to social scientists who strive for theoretically consistent, analytically precise, empirically refutable, and practically useful theories of social phenomena. When Douglas D Heckathorn became the journal’s editor in
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Do informal reasoning fallacies really shape decisions? Experimental evidence Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-07-20 Lucie Vrbová, Kateřina Jiřinová, Karel Helman, Hana Lorencová
Informal reasoning fallacies belong to a persuasive tactic, leading to a conclusion that is not supported by premises but reached through emotions and/or misleading and incomplete information. Previous research focused on the ability to recognize informal reasoning fallacies. However, the recognition itself does not necessarily mean immunity to their influence on decisions made. An experiment was designed
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From green to ripe: Dynamics of peacemaking in Colombia (1998–2016) Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-06-25 Jerónimo Ríos, Manuel Hidalgo, Luis Fernando Medina
Armed conflict in Colombia with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC-EP) was only settled after fifty years and several attempts at negotiations. This sequence of events fits the pattern of “conflict ripeness” first proposed by William Zartman. But using a successful settlement as a way to determine ripeness can be tautological. To address this issue, we develop a formal model to identify
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Efficiency loss and support for income redistribution: Evidence from a laboratory experiment Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-05-12 Markus Tepe, Fabian Paetzel, Jan Lorenz, Maximilian Lutz
Income redistribution with an efficiency loss is expected to have a twofold negative effect on support for redistribution, as it lowers egoistic support for redistribution and activates efficiency preferences. This study tests whether such a negative relationship exists, increases with the size of efficiency loss and interacts with group communication and the income position. We present a laboratory
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Corrigendum to “The Five Games of Mr Edgar Allan Poe: A study of strategic thought in “The Purloined Letter”” Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-04-16
Read, Daniel (2020) The Five Games of Mr Edgar Allan Poe: A study of strategic thought in “The Purloined Letter” Rationality and Society 32(4): 369–401.
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Faith struggles in science: Academic schools as religious sects Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-04-10 Florian Follert, Frank Daumann
Particularly in the social sciences, scientific debates can be understood as a special expression of academic discourse and ideally support the progress of knowledge within a discipline. Very often, there are competing academic schools with greatly differing theoretical foundations, like we have seen, for example, in social sciences especially by the “Methodenstreit” in economics, or the “Positivismusstreit”
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How can I help you? Multiple resource availability promotes generosity with low-value (but not high-value) resources Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-03-09 Ashley Harrell
People commonly possess multiple, differentially-valued resources they can use to benefit those in need: contributing money, volunteering time, donating unwanted possessions, posting on social media to raise awareness, and more. But the majority of experimental work on generosity and helping behavior has studied giving when only a single valuable resource is available to give. This project considers:
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Populism and the rational choice model: The case of the French National Front Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-03-01 François Facchini, Louis Jaeck
This article proposes a general model of partisan political dealignment based on the theory of expressive voting. It is based on the Riker and Odershook equation. Voters cast a ballot for a political party if the utility associated with expressing their support for it is more than their expressive costs. Expressive utility is modeled here as a certain utility model. Then, the model is applied to the
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Relative risk aversion models: How plausible are their assumptions? Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-02-20 Carlo Barone, Katherin Barg, Mathieu Ichou
This work examines the validity of the two main assumptions of relative risk-aversion models of educational inequality. We compare the Breen-Goldthorpe (BG) and the Breen-Yaish (BY) models in terms of their assumptions about status maintenance motives and beliefs about the occupational risks associated with educational decisions. Concerning the first assumption, our contribution is threefold. First
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Death beyond the means: Funeral overspending and its government regulation around the world Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-01-31 Turkhan Sadigov
While death-related household overspending is increasingly an international phenomenon with far-reaching implications, the government responses to it vary greatly throughout the world. This article offers a model of death-related overspending, including both population and governments. The analysis of data from 118 countries empirically supports the main research argument—the decline of traditional
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The economics of escalation Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2021-01-06 Fabio D’Orlando, Sharon Ricciotti
Escalation is a key characteristic of many consumption behaviors that has not received theoretical attention. This paper aims to propose both a definition and a theoretical treatment of escalation in consumption. We define escalation as a subject’s attempt to obtain “more” or engage in consumption behaviors that are “more intense” on a measurable, quantitative or qualitative, objective or subjective
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Property rights’ emergence in illicit drug markets Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-12-29 Jefferson DP Bertolai, Luiz GDS Scorzafave
Governance rules are efficient mechanisms in the sense that they increase people’s welfare. They emerge even when the state is unable or refuses to create and enforce them. We study a situation in which this demand for governance manifests itself through the emergence of property rights in illicit drug markets: a privately-provided governance. Specifically, we propose a model for property rights emergence
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On-Side fighting in civil war: The logic of mortal alignment in Syria Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-11-01 Jonah Schulhofer-Wohl
On-side fighting – outright violence between armed groups aligned on the same side of a civil war’s master cleavage – represents a devastating breakdown in cooperation. Its humanitarian consequences are also grave. But it has been under-recognized empirically and therefore under-theorized by scholars to date. This article remedies the omission. Existing research can be extrapolated to produce candidate
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Time-inconsistent preferences and the minimum legal tobacco consuming age Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-10-29 Bertrand Crettez, Régis Deloche
In both the United States of America and the European Union, Member States are encouraged to prevent young people from starting to smoke by forbidding selling tobacco products to people under a cer...
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Asymmetric awareness and heterogeneous agents Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-10-16 Antoine Dubus
We consider a principal-agent model with moral-hazard and asymmetric awareness and show how the heterogeneity of agents on their aversion to effort affects contract design. We discuss the optimal contract adopted when a principal is aware of all the impacts of an agent’s action, while agents ignore some of them. When a principal faces two types of agents, where one type is more effort-averse than the
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The pulse-like nature of decisions in rational choice theory Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-10-06 Enzo Lenine
Is the act of making a decision a process or pulse? Critiques of rational choice theory and models often treat cognitive processes of preference ordering as part of the act of decision that should be incorporated into the models. The failure to account for human psychology, they argue, responds for RCT’s lack of predictability. However, this argument and the models of human mind, such as prospect theory
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The five games of Mr Edgar Allan Poe: A study of strategic thought in ‘The Purloined Letter’ Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-10-04 Daniel Read
This paper investigates strategic thinking in the fictional world of Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’. This short story has been rightly celebrated for its explicit analysis of strategic reasoning in which players attempt to outwit one another, which involves accounting for how they are all attempting to outwit one another. I differ from previous analyses by examining how the actors can often
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To leave or not to leave? Understanding the support for the United Kingdom membership in the European Union: Identity, attitudes towards the political system and socio-economic status Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-07-25 Nicola Pensiero
This article proposes a decision model of the British support for leaving the European Union (EU) that includes both identity aspirations, attitudes towards the political system and economic interest and test it on the Understanding Society 6th, 7th and 8th surveys. Current studies tend to interpret the British Euroscepticism as a combination of attachment to British identity, lack of economic opportunities
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Do Koreans like being nudged? Survey evidence for the contextuality of behavioral public policy Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-07-01 David Oliver Kasdan
This study explores the nuances of South Koreans’ approval for nudge policies by replicating a survey conducted in global nudge research, and then extending the analysis and discussion with greater detail about the context. The traditions, culture, and development of Korea have contributed to a distinct behavioral bias profile that must be integrated into approaches for nudge policy design and implementation
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A theory of norm collapse Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-05-01 Chien Liu
How a social norm emerges has been studied extensively. However, how a norm collapses has rarely been addressed in the literature. In this article, extending the theories of norm emergence by Coleman and Axelrod, I propose a theory of norm collapse. This theory specifies one micro mechanism and macro–micro–macro process through which a norm likely decays and eventually collapses. Then, as a test, I
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You are who your friends are? Rationality and Society (IF 0.895) Pub Date : 2020-05-01 Fabian Winter, Mitesh Kataria
We study the existence of homophily (i.e. the tendency for people to be friends with people who are similar to themselves) with respect to trustworthiness. We ask whether two friends show similarly trustworthy behavior toward strangers, and whether such behavior is expected by a third party. We develop a simple model of Bayesian learning in trust games and test the derived hypotheses in a controlled