Markets and Democracy: Participation, Accountability and Efficiency

by Samuel Bowles (Editor), Herbert Gintis (Editor)

The market does not spontaneously generate democratic or participatory economic institutions. This book asks whether a modern, efficient economy can be rendered democratically accountable and, if so, what strategic changes might be required to regulate the market-mediated interaction of economic agents. The contributors bring contemporary microeconomic theory to bear on a range of related issues, including the relationship between democratic firms and efficiency in market economies; incentives and the relative merits of various forms of internal democratic decision-making; and the effects of democratically accountable firms on innovation, saving, investment, and on the informational and disciplinary aspects of markets. Various approaches to the study of economic interaction (game theory, transactions' cost analysis, social choice theory, rent-seeking, etc.) are considered in an attempt to understand the relationship between power and efficiency in market economies.

Genres: Economics

Hardcover

First published July 22, 1993

About the author

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Samuel Bowles is Research Professor and Director of the Behavioral Sciences Program at the Santa Fe Institute and Professor of Economics at the University of Siena. He is coauthor of Notes and Problems in Microeconomic Theory (North Holland Texts in Mathematical Economics) and Schooling in Capitalist America (Basic Books), and has published articles, most recently, in the American Economic Review, Nature, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Theoretical Biology.