IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/mes/jeciss/v48y2014i2p267-278.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Niccolò Machiavelli and the Origins of Mechanism Design

Author

Listed:
  • Samuel Bowles

Abstract

In matters of public policy, economists often design incentives and constraints so that economic actors with unrestricted preferences (including the self-interested motivations of homo economicus) will implement socially desired allocations. This paradigm, which dates to Machiavelli, contrasts sharply with an earlier approach, initiated by Aristotle, in which good governance entailed the cultivation of good citizens. Modern mechanism design, contract theory, and behavioral economics provide a critical perspective on the Machiavellian paradigm, and suggest a reformulation along more Aristotelian lines.

Suggested Citation

  • Samuel Bowles, 2014. "Niccolò Machiavelli and the Origins of Mechanism Design," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(2), pages 267-278.
    • Handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:48:y:2014:i:2:p:267-278
    DOI: 10.2753/JEI0021-3624480202
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.2753/JEI0021-3624480202
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.2753/JEI0021-3624480202?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hiroyasu Uemura, 2019. "Social preference and civil society in the institutional analysis of capitalisms: an attempt to integrate Samuel Bowles’ The Moral Economy and Robert Boyer’s Régulation Theory," Evolutionary and Institutional Economics Review, Springer, vol. 16(2), pages 433-453, December.
    2. Simon Gächter & Esther Kaiser & Manfred Königstein, 2024. "Incentive contracts crowd out voluntary cooperation: Evidence from gift-exchange experiments," Discussion Papers 2024-02, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:mes:jeciss:v:48:y:2014:i:2:p:267-278. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/MJEI20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.