Philippe Fontaine

Identification and Economic Behavior Sympathy and Empathy in Historical Perspective

In modern economics, the use of sympathy and empathy shows significant ambiguity. Sympathy has been used in two different senses. First, it refers to cases where the concern for others directly affects an individuals own welfare (Sen, 1977). Second, the term has served the purposes of welfare economics, where it is associated with interpersonal comparisons of the extended sympathy type, that is, comparisons between ones own situation in a social state and someone elses in a different social state (Arrow, 1963 [1951]). On the other hand, empathy has been used interchangeably with sympathy either to render the idea of interdependent utility functions (Leibenstein, 1976), or to convey the imaginative process of imagining oneself in someone elses place (Harsanyi, 1977).

Blood, Politics, and Social Science

Long before his last book, The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy, was published in early 1971, Richard M. Titmuss (1907–1973), a professor of social administration at the London School of Economics, had been a major figure in the debates over the welfare state. The Gift Relationship was the culmination of an eventful relationship with the Institute of Economic Affairs, a think tank that advocated the extension of rational pricing to social services. By arguing that the British system of blood procurement and distribution, based on free giving within the National Health Service, was more efficient than the partly commercialized American system, Titmuss intended to signal the dangers of the increasing commercialization of society. What made for the impact of his book, however, was not merely its argument that transfusion‐transmitted infections were much more common with paid than with voluntary donors, but also its reflections on what it is that holds a society together. And here Titmuss argued that a “socialist” social policy, by encouraging the sense of community, played a central role. The eclecticism of Titmuss’s work, together with its strong ethical and political flavor, makes it a rich and original account of the “social” at a time when heated debates over social policy, both in Britain and in the United States, raised the question of the division of labor among the social sciences.

The experiment in the history of economics

List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction 1. Experimental Economic Games 2. The Allais Paradox and its Immediate Consequences For Expected Utility Theory 3. Experimentation, General Equilibrium and Games 4. Thought - and Performed Experiments in Hayek and Morgenstern 5. Social Comptabilism and Pure Credit Systems 6. The Vanity of Rigour in Economics

Stabilizing American Society: Kenneth Boulding and the Integration of the Social Sciences, 1943–1980

For more than thirty years after World War II, the unconventional economist Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) was a fervent advocate of the integration of the social sciences. Building on common general principles from various fields, notably economics, political science, and sociology, Boulding claimed that an integrated social science in which mental images were recognized as the main determinant of human behavior would allow for a better understanding of society. Bouldings approach culminated in the social triangle, a view of society as comprised of three main social organizers – exchange, threat, and love – combined in varying proportions. According to this view, the problems of American society were caused by an unbalanced combination of these three organizers. The goal of integrated social scientific knowledge was therefore to help policy makers achieve the “right” proportions of exchange, threat, and love that would lead to social stabilization. Though he was hopeful that cross-disciplinary exchanges would overcome the shortcomings of too narrow specialization, Boulding found that rather than being the locus of a peaceful and mutually beneficial exchange, disciplinary boundaries were often the occasion of conflict and miscommunication.

Introduction: The Social Sciences in a Cross-Disciplinary Age

As studies of the history of social science since 1945 have multiplied over the past decade and a half, it has not been unusual for commentators to present cross-disciplinary ventures as a byproduct of the disciplinary system and to contrast the stability of disciplines with the highs and lows of interdisciplinary relationships. In contrast, this special issue takes the view that cross-disciplinary ventures should be considered not so much as efforts to loosen up the disciplinary yoke, but as an alternative form of production and dissemination of social scientific knowledge. Paradoxically, the relationship between cross-disciplinary ventures and the disciplinary system appears as one of complementarity and not of dependence. The essays in the special issue provide examples of ways to reconsider what can be called the interdisciplinary chaos.

Introduction: History of Economics as History of Social Science

Disciplinary discourses often contain versions of their own history that historians, when they bother to look, find too narrow. These selfcontained narratives of a discipline’s past emphasize the analytical power of the specific, creative works that have shaped the discipline, and pay little attention to whatever extradisciplinary engagements may have helped to inspire these acts of creativity. But historians rarely bother to look. They are usually content to leave to the discipline’s own chroniclers the task of assigning historical meaning to pivotal innovations and classic texts. —David A. Hollinger, “The Defense of Democracy and Robert K. Merton’s Formulation of the Scientific Ethos” (1996)

HARSANYI BEFORE ECONOMICS: AN INTRODUCTION

Upon learning that John C. Harsanyi (1920–2000) was awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, in 1994, for his pioneering work in game theory, few economists probably questioned the appropriateness of that choice. The Budapest-born social scientist had already been recognized as a first-rank contributor to non-cooperative game theory for some time (see, e.g., Gul 1997). However, as many readers of this journal will be aware, Harsanyi first contributed to welfare economics, not game theory. More importantly, he was philosophically minded and accordingly has been “acknowledged as the most influential philosopher in economics†(GA¼th 1994: 252).1 This is of some significance since, before Harsanyi became acquainted with economics around 1950, his main interest was philosophy and, to a lesser extent, sociology and psychology. Rather than an economist with philosophical leanings, Harsanyi was actually a philosopher turned economist.

WALKING THE TIGHTROPE: THE COMMITTEE ON THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES AND ACADEMIC CULTURES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, 1949-1955.

The Chicago Committee on the Behavioral Sciences occupies a special place in the eponymous movement. Involving prominent figures such as psychologist James G. Miller and neurophysiologist Ralph W. Gerard, this committee embodied the common belief among behavioral scientists that a cross-disciplinary approach using natural science methods was key to understanding major issues facing mid-century American society. This interdivisional committee fell under the jurisdiction of both the natural and social sciences. As such, its flagship project, an institute of mental sciences, had to face the reluctance both of natural scientists who thought it inadequately scientific and of social scientists who regard its efforts as too narrow in scope and too biological in orientation. Though it failed in its main objective to create an institute, the committee was a formidable instrument of intellectual stimulation and socialization for its members. It provided them with an opportunity to familiarize themselves with each others scientific backgrounds, practices and jargons, realize the significance of academic cultural differences and learn ways to accommodate them.

The homeless observer: John Harsanyi on interpersonal utility comparisons and bargaining, 1950-1964

This paper traces interpersonal utility comparisons and bargaining in the work of John Harsanyi from the 1950s to the mid-1960s. As his preoccupation with how theorists can obtain information about agents moved from an approach centered on empathetic understanding to the more distanced perspective associated with game theory, Harsanyi shifted emphasis from the social scientist’s lack of information vis-a-vis agents to agents’ lack of information about each other. In the process, he provided economists with an analytical framework they could use to study problems related to the distribution of information among agents while consolidating the perspective of a distant observer whose knowledge can replace that of real people.

Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, Volume 5: Themes in Pre-Classical, Classical and Marxian Economics@@@Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought, Volume 6: Themes in Keynesian Criticism and Supplementary Modern Topics

Contents: Part I: Interpretations of Keyness Political and Early Economic Writing Part II: The Reception of Keyness The Economic Consequences of the Peace Part III: Critiques of the Keynesian Perspective Part V: Supplementary Modern Topics