Moral principle---not mere self-interest---drives rational decision making
"Two impressive features of this book are its clarity of purpose and the breadth of disciplinary resources to which it appeals."
—Geoffrey Brennan, Professor of Economics, Australian National University
"Facing massive evidence that people do not act generally as self-regarding payoff maximizers, economists have become increasingly interested in issues of cooperation, altruism, identity, and morality. Lanse Minkler's contribution is particularly important because of his powerful argument that the evidence of cooperation cannot be explained adequately by a more complicated preference function. A disposition for honesty is not simply a matter of preference–it is an issue of personal integrity, identity, and commitment. This has major implications. In particular we have to reconstruct the theory of the firm from first principles. No economist committed to the pursuit of truth should ignore this volume."
—Geoffrey Hodgson, Research Professor in Business Studies, University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom and Editor in Chief of the Journal of Institutional Economics, published by Cambridge University Press
"This is an interesting account of the role of integrity---preference-integrity and commitment-integrity---on economic behavior. While drawing knowledge from traditional subfields of economics, it also includes insights gleaned from psychology and philosophy, showing their effects in varied areas such as political behavior, the employment relation, religion, and human rights. In this exciting volume Lanse Minkler does an excellent job of incorporating various newer concepts of fairness and integrity into economic analysis."
—Ernst Fehr, Professor and Head of the Chair of Microeconomics and Experimental Economic Research, and Director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zürich
Read: Blog UConn Econ | 2/23/2009
