Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notation
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The psychological predictability problem
- 3 Rational choice responses
- 4 Behaviourally informed responses
- 5 Behaviourally determined responders
- 6 Outlook: implications for interaction with higher complexity
- 7 Predictability at the crossroads of competing institutionalisms
- Equations
- References
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Notation
- 1 Introduction
- 2 The psychological predictability problem
- 3 Rational choice responses
- 4 Behaviourally informed responses
- 5 Behaviourally determined responders
- 6 Outlook: implications for interaction with higher complexity
- 7 Predictability at the crossroads of competing institutionalisms
- Equations
- References
- Index
Summary
Surprise is a necessary member of a research team. My group conducts research on collective goods, like clean air, fisheries or the radio spectrum. We are interested in institutional design. The standard models for understanding our issue are economic. These models are admirably clear and advanced. But they are not interested in some phenomena that are crucial for our class of goods from a policy perspective. For example, people possess highly sensitive mechanisms for detecting cheats, and reactions to cheats are likely to be driven by individually quite irrational, but socially powerful punitive sentiments. Such findings have led us to a shift in the agenda. We now focus on fleshing out the implications of behavioural research for institutional design in the area of collective goods.
Not all of us were specialists in behavioural research at the outset of our work. The group therefore went through an extended exercise in collective learning, guided by those specialists who had been willing to join us for the purpose. Starting with the biases literature, we made ever more daring forays into behavioural territory. On doing this, one cannot but be overwhelmed by the richness of findings. This experience turned out to be the surprise cause for this book: if the human mind, at least at the symbolic level, is such a mixed bag of forces and effects, how on earth can we ever interact in a meaningful way? My intuition was: it is due to institutions. This book explores the hypothesis.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Generating PredictabilityInstitutional Analysis and Design, pp. ix - xPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005