Essays on norms and growth in a dynamical perspective
Essays on norms and growth in a dynamical perspective
Part 1 develops a model of how social norms come to have motivational power on individual behaviour. This draws on the idea that an individual weighs different ‘reasons to action’, of which self-interest is only one between them when making decision. These are determined in relation with internally consistent standards of assessment of the situation that the agent faces. A formal model is developed; and the existing theories based on the notion of normative expectations are contrasted with a model developed in Chapter 2, in which individuals’ other-regarding motivation consists of a conditional willingness to comply with some common ideas of public interest. The two models are contrasted in Chapter 4 within an evolutionary framework, and different concepts of equilibrium and of their stability are put forward in order to appreciate the different implications of the two models in terms of emergence of social norms and of the cognitive and strategic structure enforcing them.
The second part of the thesis develops a model of growth, in which lock-ins to sub-optimal outcomes occur because of ‘co-ordination failures’ between agents about the choices of the skills by employees and technologies by employers. The model differs from the traditional accounts of growth because of three key assumptions: agents are boundedly rational; prices are not perfectly flexible; a variety of technologies exists, which follow a pattern of technical change of the localized type; this makes technological information a public good only at the sectoral, but not at the aggregate level.
The third part of the thesis develops the earlier analysis and provides a framework in which social norms and economic outcomes can be jointly analysed. A model is developed addressing the question of the relationship between social norms, technology choice, and in the optimal institutional management of uncertainty.
University of Southampton
Grimalda, Gianluca Francesco
8e7f04e1-5ed8-45f1-b1aa-391003a8020b
2003
Grimalda, Gianluca Francesco
8e7f04e1-5ed8-45f1-b1aa-391003a8020b
Grimalda, Gianluca Francesco
(2003)
Essays on norms and growth in a dynamical perspective.
University of Southampton, Doctoral Thesis.
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Thesis
(Doctoral)
Abstract
Part 1 develops a model of how social norms come to have motivational power on individual behaviour. This draws on the idea that an individual weighs different ‘reasons to action’, of which self-interest is only one between them when making decision. These are determined in relation with internally consistent standards of assessment of the situation that the agent faces. A formal model is developed; and the existing theories based on the notion of normative expectations are contrasted with a model developed in Chapter 2, in which individuals’ other-regarding motivation consists of a conditional willingness to comply with some common ideas of public interest. The two models are contrasted in Chapter 4 within an evolutionary framework, and different concepts of equilibrium and of their stability are put forward in order to appreciate the different implications of the two models in terms of emergence of social norms and of the cognitive and strategic structure enforcing them.
The second part of the thesis develops a model of growth, in which lock-ins to sub-optimal outcomes occur because of ‘co-ordination failures’ between agents about the choices of the skills by employees and technologies by employers. The model differs from the traditional accounts of growth because of three key assumptions: agents are boundedly rational; prices are not perfectly flexible; a variety of technologies exists, which follow a pattern of technical change of the localized type; this makes technological information a public good only at the sectoral, but not at the aggregate level.
The third part of the thesis develops the earlier analysis and provides a framework in which social norms and economic outcomes can be jointly analysed. A model is developed addressing the question of the relationship between social norms, technology choice, and in the optimal institutional management of uncertainty.
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Published date: 2003
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Local EPrints ID: 465091
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/465091
PURE UUID: b1f51486-4a0c-4783-b6a7-975b20de5f5d
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Date deposited: 05 Jul 2022 00:22
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 19:56
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Author:
Gianluca Francesco Grimalda
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