IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_4745.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Of Morals, Markets and Mice: A Comment on Falk and Szech

Author

Listed:
  • Friedrich Breyer
  • Joachim Weimann

Abstract

A recent experimental study by Falk and Szech (Science, 2013) concludes that „markets erode moral values”. If this were true, economists, who have emphasized the efficiency enhancing effects of markets for centuries, would have to reconsider their judgments fundamentally. This would be no less than a revolution in normative economics. In this note we demonstrate that the claim made by Falk and Szech is unfounded and that their experimental results can be (and should be) interpreted in exactly the opposite way.

Suggested Citation

  • Friedrich Breyer & Joachim Weimann, 2014. "Of Morals, Markets and Mice: A Comment on Falk and Szech," CESifo Working Paper Series 4745, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_4745
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp4745.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    2. Martin G. Kocher & Matthias Sutter, 2005. "The Decision Maker Matters: Individual Versus Group Behaviour in Experimental Beauty-Contest Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(500), pages 200-223, January.
    3. Guth, Werner & Schmittberger, Rolf & Schwarze, Bernd, 1982. "An experimental analysis of ultimatum bargaining," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 367-388, December.
    4. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Megan V. Teague & Virgil Henry Storr & Rosemarie Fike, 2020. "Economic freedom and materialism: an empirical analysis," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 31(1), pages 1-44, March.
    2. René Ruske, 2015. "Does Economics Make Politicians Corrupt? Empirical Evidence from the United States Congress," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(2), pages 240-254, May.
    3. Irlenbusch, Bernd & Saxler, David, 2015. "Social Responsibility in Market Interaction," IZA Discussion Papers 9240, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Hannes Rusch, 2015. "Do Bankers Have Deviant Moral Attitudes? ?Negative Results from a Tentative Survey," Rationality, Markets and Morals, Frankfurt School Verlag, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, vol. 6(92), January.
    5. Bernd Irlenbusch & David J. Saxler, 2015. "Social responsibility in market interaction," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-05, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    6. Michael P. Schlaile & Katharina Klein & Wolfgang Böck, 2018. "From Bounded Morality to Consumer Social Responsibility: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Socially Responsible Consumption and Its Obstacles," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 561-588, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Breyer, Friedrich & Weimann, Joachim, 2015. "Of morals, markets and mice: Be careful drawing policy conclusions from experimental findings!," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 387-390.
    2. Patrick W. Schmitz, 2006. "Book Review," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 162(3), pages 535-542, September.
    3. Itzhak Gilboa & Andrew Postlewaite & Larry Samuelson & David Schmeidler, 2011. "Economic Models as Analogies," PIER Working Paper Archive 12-001, Penn Institute for Economic Research, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    4. Forges, Francoise & Minelli, Enrico & Vohra, Rajiv, 2002. "Incentives and the core of an exchange economy: a survey," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(1-2), pages 1-41, September.
    5. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    6. Barney Hartman‐Glaser & Benjamin Hébert, 2020. "The Insurance Is the Lemon: Failing to Index Contracts," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 75(1), pages 463-506, February.
    7. Olivier Compte & Philippe Jehiel, 2009. "Veto Constraint in Mechanism Design: Inefficiency with Correlated Types," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 182-206, February.
    8. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2006. "Book Review of “Contract Theory” (Bolton and Dewatripont, 2005)," MPRA Paper 6977, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Robert E. Hall, 2014. "Trade with Asymmetric Information," Central Banking, Analysis, and Economic Policies Book Series, in: Sofía Bauducco & Lawrence Christiano & Claudio Raddatz (ed.),Macroeconomic and Financial Stability: challenges for Monetary Policy, edition 1, volume 19, chapter 5, pages 151-160, Central Bank of Chile.
    10. Fieseler, Karsten & Kittsteiner, Thomas & Moldovanu, Benny, 2003. "Partnerships, lemons, and efficient trade," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(2), pages 223-234, December.
    11. Cabrales, Antonio & Charness, Gary, 2011. "Optimal contracts with team production and hidden information: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(2), pages 163-176, February.
    12. Athreya, Kartik B., 2014. "Big Ideas in Macroeconomics: A Nontechnical View," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262019736, April.
    13. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Sliwka, Dirk, 1998. "Die Bedeutung von privater Information für Vertragsbeziehungen zwischen Käufern und Verkäufern," MPRA Paper 6941, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Ornelas, Emanuel & Turner, John L., 2007. "Efficient dissolution of partnerships and the structure of control," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 187-199, July.
    16. Wolfgang Luhan & Martin Kocher & Matthias Sutter, 2009. "Group polarization in the team dictator game reconsidered," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(1), pages 26-41, March.
    17. Robert J. Weber, 1985. "Negotiation and Arbitration: A Game-Theoretic Perspective," Discussion Papers 666, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    18. Benndorf, Volker & Kübler, Dorothea & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2015. "Privacy concerns, voluntary disclosure of information, and unraveling: An experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 43-59.
    19. Vincent Glode & Christian Opp, 2016. "Asymmetric Information and Intermediation Chains," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(9), pages 2699-2721, September.
    20. Kai A. Konrad & Florian Morath & Wieland Müller, 2014. "Taxation and Market Power," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 47(1), pages 173-202, February.
    21. Parco, James E. & Murphy, Ryan O., 2013. "Resistance to truthful revelation in bargaining: Persistent bid shading and the play of dominated strategies," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 154-170.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

    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:ces:ceswps:_4745. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.