著者

伊藤 秀史

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.2, pp.52-62, 2007-12

被引用文献数

2

---

The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of contract theory, a highly successful and active research area in microeconomics, with particular emphasis on its history and influence on modern economics. According to Bolton and Dewatripont (2005), currently a standard textbook in this field, the theory of incentives, information, and economic institutions is generally referred to in short as contract theory. Contract theory is thus a theory of imperfect markets, mainly because of asymmetric information such as moral hazard and adverse selection. Contract theory is also a theory of economic institutions and as such applies far beyond markets. The basic model of moral hazard and that of adverse selection both use agency (or principal-agent) relationships as the main analytical framework, in response to various attempts to lay open the black-box nature of the firm in the standard neoclassical model. Furthermore, theories of boundaries of the firm, originating out of Coase's classical work, are today analyzed in the framework of incomplete contracts that leads to the third basic model of contract theory, along with those of moral hazard and adverse selection. Although these basic models are games with specific extensive forms, they are formulated as optimization problems subject to incentive compatibility and participation conditions, and are solved without explicit reference to equilibrium concepts. Contract theory is thus related to both price theory and game theory, but it has developed its own analytical frameworks and tools to solve problems under conditions of asymmetric information or incomplete contracts. Contract theory is also a theory of incentive design. Incentive design is not important under perfect competition but is crucial when there is asymmetric information or contractual incompleteness. Myerson claims that today, "economists can define their field more broadly, as being about the analysis of incentives in all social institutions." (Myerson 1999) I argue that it is contract theory that enables us to define today's field more broadly.

著者

小峯 敦

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, no.2, pp.70-103, 2023-01-25 (Released:2023-08-05)

著者

田中 秀臣

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, no.2, pp.100-101, 2020 (Released:2020-02-29)

著者

Alex M. Thomas

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, no.2, pp.19-44, 2023-01-25 (Released:2023-08-05)

被引用文献数

1

著者

西條 辰義

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.2, pp.51-66, 2006-12-20

---

Over the past decade, a number of economists at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, including myself, have been conducting experiments to test theories regarding the provision of public goods. One of our more interesting findings to date is evidence among Japanese of a trait that can be described as "spite" in the way it impacts the provision of public goods. This paper describes the purposes, method, and some results of those experiments. We have been forced to ponder economic methodology in every phase of this project. We considered the methods of neo-classical economists such as Walras and Pareto, for example, who tended primarily to analyze data without concern for the motives behind strategic choices, and we examined the approach of those experimentalists who put forth questions only after finishing their tests. To develop our own methodology, therefore, it seemed reasonable and legitimate to pose questions midway through our experiments in order to elicit the factors behind strategic choices. That reasoning led to questions concerning the validity of behavioral assumptions made by neo-classical economists, moving us well away from Milton Friedman, who pays little attention to whether those assumptions are valid or not. In this way, experimentalists in this area, including ourselves, have begun to study behavior in terms of whether it is altruistic, spiteful, or fair in the provision of public goods. In our experiments, we found that the first priority for several subjects was not the total payoff amount they could expect to receive but the ranking among them. Comparing American subjects with Japanese, we found that the American subjects tended to behave as game theory would predict, while some Japanese subjects adopted 'spiteful' strategies initially and demonstrated cooperative behavior later. Today, we believe that understanding human behavior is the central issue in social science. Adam Smith, David Hume, and other eighteenth-century thinkers were interested in the sentiment and emotion behind economic decisions, but for a long time neoclassical economists of the last century effectively avoided the factor of motivation behind human behavior. By describing the experimental method, I hope that this paper will help to open a new and challenging path to understand human economic behavior and may contribute to the development of a new economics for this century.

著者

下平 裕之

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, no.1, pp.104-123, 2019 (Released:2019-10-01)

被引用文献数

2

著者

Yusuke Ando Shin Kubo

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.64, no.1, pp.1-28, 2022-07-25 (Released:2023-02-01)

著者

岡田 章

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.1, pp.137-154, 2007-06-30 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

79

---

This paper considers the history of game theory since von Neumann and Morgenstern published their monumental work The Theory of Games and Economic Behavior in 1944. It points out changes in research themes and discusses what game theory has achieved up to the present. The aim of von Neumann and Morgenstern was “to find the mathematically complete principles which define rational behavior for the participants in a social economy, and to derive from them the general characteristics of that behavior.” Extending the theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern, Nash classified all games as either non-cooperative games or cooperative games and defined the notion of an equilibrium point for a non-cooperative game. Nash also suggested a research program, now called the Nash program, to analyze a coop erative game by constructing a non-cooperative game model for negotiations. The main field of game theory was cooperative games in the 1950s and the 1960s. Thereafter, research trends in game theory in the 1970s and the 1980s shifted from cooperative games to non-cooperative games, led by the seminal works of Harsanyi on incomplete information games and Selten on perfect equilibrium in extensive games. This socalled non-cooperative revolution greatly promoted applications of non-cooperative game theory to economics. At the same time, researchers became increasingly dissatisfied with the strong assumption of rationality in traditional game theory, and consequently research interest turned toward two new fields in the 1990s. One is evolutionary game theory, developing out of evolutionary biology, and the other is behavioral game theory, which collaborates with psychology. Evolutionary game theory investigates dynamic processes of evolution and learning in economic behavior, and it reformulates game equilibrium as a stable stationary state of those dynamic processes. Behavioral game theory studies the structures of motivation, cognition, and reasoning in human decision-making using the methodology of experiments. This paper shows how present-day research in game theory is developing in divergent fields that consider both traditional theory based on unbounded rationality and behavioral theory exploring human bounded rationality. Game theory continues to be one of the most active research fields in economics.

著者

江里口 拓

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.50, no.1, pp.23-40, 2008-07-31 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

65

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The purposes of this paper are, first, to present a critique of B. Semmel's social imperialist inter-pretation of Sidney and Beatrice Webb's theories, and second, to establish the compatibility of the Webbs' ideas on “national efficiency” with the “internationalism” of the world economy. Pivotal to their program of national efficiency were the idea of “national minimum” and strategies developed at the London School of Economics (LSE).As they argued in Industrial Democracy (1897), the Webbs believed that national minimum policy should be based on free trade, and from that standpoint they criticised the protectionism of W. Ashley. However, the Webbs did not recognise the necessity for an “international minimum” as proposed by A. C. Pigou in The Economics of Welfare (1920) because effective use of the national minimum policy would by itself ensure efficiency in the British economy. This idea was affirmed with the founding of LSE (1895), which was established with the objective of promoting the application of scientific knowledge and skills (especially in areas of commerce and public administration) to the British economy. The Webbs hoped that their policies of national efficiency, which they saw as compatible with free trade, would be adopted by every civilised nation.Behind the Webbs' approach to the social imperialists were the realities of British party politics at the turn of the century, just before the blossoming of the “new liberalism.” That was the context in which they sought to realise their policies of national efficiency. It is therefore important to carefully distinguish their political behaviour from their economic thought.After the Second World War, G. Myrdal (1960) criticised the welfare state on grounds of its nationalist bias. However, the Webbs' idea of national efficiency based on free trade continues to offer an important clue to the resolution of that aporia in the logic of modern welfare states.

著者

伊藤 宣広

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.57, no.2, pp.118-119, 2016 (Released:2019-11-26)

著者

黒木 亮

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.53, no.1, pp.21-43, 2011 (Released:2019-08-21)

---

One of the most distinguished features of Frank Knightʼs liberal thought seems to be his eco-nomic, political, and ethical criticisms both of the case for and against the free-enterprise com-petitive system. Through this multi-level, poly-angular analysis and on a resignation that the system appears as the best or “least worst” as possible human beings build on earth, Knight continued to identify many defects in the sys-tem, and disclose many absurdities in the way of thinking on which we rest unwittingly. For “menʼs errors,” he believed, “mostly lie in their premises, not in bad logic.” In this paper, I select the following five top-ics through which Knight repeatedly discussed our premises: (1) uneconomic aspect of compe-tition, (2) normative and conservative character of positive economics, (3) imaginary nature othe idea of natural rights, (4) self-deconstructive tendency of business and the power game, and (5) plural meanings of love in liberal society.This paper proposes that Knightʼs radical yet constructive criticisms aimed to refine, rather than advocate, the free-enterprise competitive system and warn against the fallacy of “absolut-ism: holding that a statement must be either true or false and that, if false, antithesis must be true.” So this essay not only destructs the image of Knight as a neo-classical economist, but also clarifies the differences and similarities between him and later Chicagoans. That is, it illuminates the contrary directions of their perspectives and the identical iconoclastic propensity for disclos-ing implicit postulates. JEL classification numbers: B 19, B 31, B 41.

著者

米田 昇平

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.51, no.2, pp.68-83, 2009 (Released:2019-08-08)

参考文献数

41

著者

伊藤 秀史

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.49, no.2, pp.52-62, 2007-12-25 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

41

被引用文献数

2

---

The purpose of this article is to offer an overview of contract theory, a highly successful and active research area in microeconomics, with particular emphasis on its history and influence on modern economics.According to Bolton and Dewatripont (2005), currently a standard textbook in this field, the theory of incentives, information, and economic institutions is generally refer-red to in short as contract theory. Contract theory is thus a theory of imperfect markets, mainly because of asymmetric information such as moral hazard and adverse selection.Contract theory is also a theory of economic institutions and as such applies far beyond markets. The basic model of moral hazard and that of adverse selection both use agency (or principal-agent) relationships as the main analytical framework, in response to various attempts to lay open the black-box nature of the firm in the standard neoclassical model. Furthermore, theories of boundaries of the firm, originating out of Coase's classical work, are today analyzed in the framework of incomplete contracts that leads to the third basic model of contract theory, along with those of moral hazard and adverse selection. Although these basic models are games with specific extensive forms, they are formulated as optimization problems subject to incentive compatibility and participation conditions, and are solved without explicit reference to equilibrium concepts. Contract theory is thus related to both price theory and game theory, but it has developed its own analytical frameworks and tools to solve problems under conditions of asymmetric information or incomplete contracts.Contract theory is also a theory of incentive design. Incentive design is not important under perfect competition but is crucial when there is asymmetric information or contractual incompleteness. Myerson claims that today, “economists can define their field more broadly, as being about the analysis of incentives in all social institutions.” (Myerson 1999) I argue that it is contract theory that enables us to define today's field more broadly.

著者

西條 辰義

出版者

The Japanease Society for the History of Economic Thought

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.48, no.2, pp.51-66, 2006-12-20 (Released:2010-08-05)

参考文献数

26

---

Over the past decade, a number of economists at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, including myself, have been conducting experiments to test theories regarding the provision of public goods. One of our more interesting findings to date is evidence among Japanese of a trait that can be described as “spite” in the way it impacts the provision of public goods. This paper describes the purposes, method, and some results of those experiments.We have been forced to ponder economic methodology in every phase of this project. We considered the methods of neo-classical economists such as Walras and Pareto, for example, who tended primarily to analyze data without concern for the motives behind strategic choices, and we examined the approach of those experimentalists who put forth questions only after finishing their tests. To develop our own methodology, therefore, it seemed reasonable and legitimate to pose questions midway through our experiments in order to elicit the factors behind strategic choices.That reasoning led to questions concerning the validity of behavioral assumptions made by neo-classical economists, moving us well away from Milton Friedman, who pays little attention to whether those assumptions are valid or not. In this way, experimentalists in this area, including ourselves, have begun to study behavior in terms of whether it is altruistic, spiteful, or fair in the provision of public goods.In our experiments, we found that the first priority for several subjects was not the total payoff amount they could expect to receive but the ranking among them. Comparing American subjects with Japanese, we found that the American subjects tended to behave as game theory would predict, while some Japanese subjects adopted 'spiteful' strategies initially and demonstrated cooperative behavior later.Today, we believe that understanding human behavior is the central issue in social science. Adam Smith, David Hume, and other eighteenth-century thinkers were interested in the sentiment and emotion behind economic decisions, but for a long time neoclassical economists of the last century effectively avoided the factor of motivation behind human behavior. By describing the experimental method, I hope that this paper will help to open a new and challenging path to understand human economic behavior and may contribute to the development of a new economics for this century.

著者

山根 卓二

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.54, no.1, pp.43-60, 2012 (Released:2019-08-22)

---

The purpose of this paper is to show that Karl William Kappʼs theory of social costs is a part of the broader research field of social value theory and to clarify how he drew policy implications from the social value theory. Kapp argued that theories in mainstream economics related to ex-ternal diseconomies cannot be applied to phe-nomena like the occurrence of photochemical smog. This is because these phenomena are dis-continuous and nonlinear and cannot be fit into the framework of arithmetic, economic calcula-tions by firms. His theory of social value ex-plains such phenomena by using a model with dynamic interactions among multiple systems (physical, biological, and economic systems)and their subsystems. According to the theory, individual organisms and the economy exist in a holistic system, repeating metabolic processes and maintaining dynamic states of balance (or a disequilibrium steady state). Dynamic states of balance can be sustained as long as the scale of pollution or natural resource depletion is small; however, if the scale exceeds the threshold, dy-namic states of balance no longer hold. For this reason, Kapp advocated the setting of minimum tolerance limits (Mindesttoleranzgrenzen) that would be necessary for the continued existence of individual organisms and the economy. JEL classification numbers: B25, B31, Q51.

著者

若田部 昌澄

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.54, no.1, pp.22-42, 2012 (Released:2019-08-22)

---

The year 2012 marks the centennial anniversary of Milton Friedmanʼs birthday and the 50th an-niversary of the publication of Capitalism and Freedom (1962). This paper examines the his-torical significance of his contributions, by mainly reviewing the growing recent research on his economics. Friedman has been popularly described as the Chicago school, monetarist, market fundamentalist, and neo-liberal; I argue that it is necessary to examine these convention-al labels from a historical perspective. Friedman witnessed several and sometimes overlapping historical eras, and the paper focuses on the his-torical contexts of the following: economic sci-ence in the latter half of the twentieth century, the National Bureau of Economic Research tra-dition, the Chicago school research tradition, money and business cycle theories, the role and responsibility of public intellectuals, and the neo-liberalism movement. This paper arrives on the following conclusion. Friedmanʼs ideas drew upon the economics of mathematical and empir-ical nature, seen in the latter twentieth century, yet his approach deviated from the more domi-nant Cowles or MIT approaches, as he regarded economics as an applied and empirical policy science. His works shared common characteris-tics with the NBER tradition, and he changed the nature of the post-War Chicago school by importing the NBER tradition. His monetary and business cycle analysis is a mixture of old Chi-cago monetary tradition and the NBER tradition. His active role as a public intellectual was met with success and controversies, as did his in-volvement with the neo-liberal movement. Al-though Friedman should be primarily studied from a historical perspective, one cannot avoid reviewing his contributions only because he ex-erted a great influence on the history of econom-ics. This becomes more acute especially in the wake of the current economic and financial cri-sis. The paper primarily examines three ques-tions: whether Friedmanʼs ideas contributed to the current crisis, what Friedman would have done if he were alive, and what could be done to improve on Friedmanʼs contributions. The paper concludes that historians of economics would and should continue arguing about and with Friedman. JEL classification numbers: B20, B22, B31.

著者

井上 彰

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, no.2, pp.32-54, 2022-01-25 (Released:2022-11-04)

著者

隅田 聡一郎

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.61, no.2, pp.80-81, 2020 (Released:2020-02-29)

著者

盛 福剛

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, no.1, pp.103-116, 2014 (Released:2019-08-24)

著者

鍋島 直樹

出版者

経済学史学会

雑誌

経済学史研究 (ISSN:18803164)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.56, no.2, pp.94-112, 2015 (Released:2019-08-26)