IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2000-184.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Individual Motivation, Its Nature, Determinants and Consequences for within group Behaviour

Author

Listed:
  • Sabina Alkire
  • Séverine Deneulin

Abstract

The paper deals with evaluating the adequacy of the assumption that in economic transactions people are self-interested insofar as they are motivated solely by the concern of maximizing their own utility, and in particular with assessing how this assumption affects within-group behaviour. Policy and incentive structures based on the assumption of exogenous and self-interest motivation can undermine other sources of motivation and have negative effects both on co-operative behaviour and also on economic efficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Sabina Alkire & Séverine Deneulin, 2000. "Individual Motivation, Its Nature, Determinants and Consequences for within group Behaviour," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2000-184, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2000-184
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp184.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Assar Lindbeck & Sten Nyberg & Jörgen W. Weibull, 1999. "Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 1-35.
    2. Frey, Bruno S & Oberholzer-Gee, Felix, 1997. "The Cost of Price Incentives: An Empirical Analysis of Motivation Crowding-Out," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(4), pages 746-755, September.
    3. Frey, Bruno S & Stutzer, Alois, 2000. "Happiness, Economy and Institutions," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 110(466), pages 918-938, October.
    4. Amartya Sen, 1997. "Maximization and the Act of Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(4), pages 745-780, July.
    5. Sah, Raaj Kumar & Stiglitz, Joseph E., 1985. "The social cost of labor and project evaluation: A general approach," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 135-163, November.
    6. repec:bla:econom:v:40:y:1973:i:159:p:241-59 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Sen, Amartya, 1985. "Goals, Commitment, and Identity," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 1(2), pages 341-355, Fall.
    8. Bardhan, Pranab, 1989. "The new institutional economics and development theory: A brief critical assessment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 17(9), pages 1389-1395, September.
    9. Stiglitz, Joseph E, 1989. "Markets, Market Failures, and Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(2), pages 197-203, May.
    10. Sen, Amartya, 1993. "Internal Consistency of Choice," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 495-521, May.
    11. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1991. "The Invisible Hand and Modern Welfare Economics," NBER Working Papers 3641, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Sen, Amartya, 1997. "Economics, Business Principles and Moral Sentiments," Business Ethics Quarterly, Cambridge University Press, vol. 7(3), pages 5-15, July.
    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. Autiero, Giuseppina & Bruno, Bruna, 2007. "Social preferences in wage bargaining: A corporatist approach," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 90-101, February.
    2. Pillai N., Vijayamohanan, 2008. "Infrastructure, Growth And Human Development In Kerala," MPRA Paper 7017, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Emmanuel Atiisipae Akolgo & Desmond Tutu Ayentimi, 2020. "Community-level mechanisms and strategies for managing sustainable water supply systems: lessons from Bongo district of northern Ghana," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 3739-3756, April.

    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. Khalil, Elias L., 1999. "Sentimental fools: a critique of Amartya Sen's notion of commitment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 373-386, December.
    2. Frederick Van der Ploeg, 2004. "The Welfare State, Redistribution and the Economy, Reciprocal Altruism, Consumer Rivalry and Second Best," CESifo Working Paper Series 1234, CESifo.
    3. Petri Böckerman & Pekka Ilmakunnas, 2006. "Elusive Effects of Unemployment on Happiness," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 79(1), pages 159-169, October.
    4. Licht Amir N., 2008. "Social Norms and the Law: Why Peoples Obey the Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(3), pages 715-750, December.
    5. Dirk Sliwka, 2007. "Trust as a Signal of a Social Norm and the Hidden Costs of Incentive Schemes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(3), pages 999-1012, June.
    6. Brian Hill, 2012. "Confidence in preferences," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 39(2), pages 273-302, July.
    7. Fehr, Ernst & Falk, Armin, 2002. "Psychological foundations of incentives," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(4-5), pages 687-724, May.
    8. Alois Stutzer & Rafael Lalive, 2004. "The Role of Social Work Norms in Job Searching and Subjective Well-Being," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(4), pages 696-719, June.
    9. Ashok Chakravarti, 2012. "Institutions, Economic Performance and the Visible Hand," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 14751.
    10. Nasreen Nawaz, 2021. "Efficiency on the dynamic adjustment path in a financial market," Journal of Economics and Finance, Springer;Academy of Economics and Finance, vol. 45(1), pages 49-74, January.
    11. Bossert, Walter & Suzumura, Kotaro, 2007. "Social Norms and Rationality of Choice," Cahiers de recherche 2007-07, Universite de Montreal, Departement de sciences economiques.
    12. Pierre Livet, 2006. "Identities, capabilities and revisions," Journal of Economic Methodology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 13(3), pages 327-348.
    13. Cyril Hédoin, 2017. "Normative economics and paternalism: the problem with the preference-satisfaction account of welfare," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 28(3), pages 286-310, September.
    14. Tyson, Christopher J., 2008. "Cognitive constraints, contraction consistency, and the satisficing criterion," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 138(1), pages 51-70, January.
    15. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2005. "Beyond outcomes: measuring procedural utility," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 57(1), pages 90-111, January.
    16. Susumu Cato, 2018. "Choice functions and weak Nash axioms," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 22(3), pages 159-176, December.
    17. Jorge Iván González, 2016. "Sentimientos y racionalidad en economía," Books, Universidad Externado de Colombia, Facultad de Economía, edition 1, number 75, August.
    18. Antoine Billot & Chantal Marlats, 2009. "Préferences psychologiques et nouvelle économie politique," Working Papers halshs-00566146, HAL.
    19. Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2006. "Two-stage Boundedly Rational Choice Procedures: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Working Papers 561, Queen Mary University of London, School of Economics and Finance.
    20. Bruno S. Frey & Alois Stutzer, 2002. "What Can Economists Learn from Happiness Research?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 40(2), pages 402-435, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Sociology of economics; Group decision making; Social capital;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C90 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - General
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    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:unu:wpaper:wp-2000-184. 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: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.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.