{"title":"Books by Samuel Bowles","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780198843207","title":"Microeconomics","description":"Bowles and Halliday capture the intellectual excitement, analytical precision, and policy relevance of the new microeconomics that has emerged over the past decades. Drawing on themes of the classical economists from Smith through Marx and 20th century writers - including Hayek, Coase, and Arrow - the authors use twenty-first century analytical methods to address enduring challenges in economics. The subtitle of the work - Competition, conflict, and coordination - signals their focus on how the institutions of a modern capitalist economy work, introducing students to recent developments in the microeconomics of credit and labor markets with asymmetric information, a dynamic analysis of how firms compete going beyond price taking, as well as bargaining over the gains from exchange, social norms, and the exercise of power. The new benchmark model proposed by Bowles and Halliday is based on an empirical approach to economic actors and problems. They start from the premise that contracts are incomplete, and that as a result market failures, rather than being a special case illustrated by environmental spillovers, are to be expected in markets for labor, credit, knowledge and throughout the economy. They explain how experiments show that human motivations include ethical as well as other-regarding preferences (rather than entirely self-interested) and explain why the technologies of knowledge-based economies are a source of winner-take-all rather than stable competition. The authors also consider the intrinsic limits of mechanism design and governmental interventions in the economy.Teaching recent developments in microeconomic theory allows the authors to provide students with the tools to analyze and engage in informed debate on the issues that concern them most: climate change, inequality, innovation, and epidemic spread. Tradeoffs are highlighted by providing models in which capitalism can be seen as an \"innovation machine\" that raises material living standards on average, while at the same time sustaining levels of inequality that many find to be unfair. Digital formats and resourcesThis title is available for students and institutions to purchase in a variety of formats and is supported by online resources. The e-book offers a mobile experience and convenient access along with self-assessment activities, video content, and links that offer extra learning support. For more information visit:www.oxfordtextbooks.co.uk\/ebooks\/ Drawing on the authors' decades of teaching the new microeconomics, this title is supported by a range of online resource for students and lecturers including multiple-choice-questions with instant feedback, interactive graphing features, walkthrough videos illuminating core concepts, further mathematical and discussion-based questions, a fully customizable test bank for lecturer use, PowerPoint slides to accompany each chapter, worksheets that can be assigned to the class, and answers to the problems set in the book.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56226889761141,"sku":"9780198843207","price":59.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780198843207_970070c0-3554-46c8-b80d-0c45290939aa.jpg?v=1786012259"},{"product_id":"9780300230512","title":"The Moral Economy – Why Good Incentives Are No Substitute for Good Citizens","description":"Why do policies and business practices that ignore the moral and generous side of human nature often fail? Should the idea of economic man—the amoral and self-interested Homo economicus—determine how we expect people to respond to monetary rewards, punishments, and other incentives? Samuel Bowles answers with a resounding “no.” Policies that follow from this paradigm, he shows, may “crowd out” ethical and generous motives and thus backfire.      But incentives per se are not really the culprit. Bowles shows that crowding out occurs when the message conveyed by fines and rewards is that self-interest is expected, that the employer thinks the workforce is lazy, or that the citizen cannot otherwise be trusted to contribute to the public good. Using historical and recent case studies as well as behavioral experiments, Bowles shows how well-designed incentives can crowd in the civic motives on which good governance depends.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311678665077,"sku":"9780300230512","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780300230512_9d6e212b-2712-4e6d-a966-8867c10ba2c5.jpg?v=1786012206"},{"product_id":"a-cooperative-species-human-reciprocity-and-its-evolution","title":"A Cooperative Species – Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution","description":"Why do humans, uniquely among animals, cooperate in large numbers to advance projects for the common good? Contrary to the conventional wisdom in biology and economics, this generous and civic-minded behavior is widespread and cannot be explained simply by far-sighted self-interest or a desire to help close genealogical kin. In A Cooperative Species, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis--pioneers in the new experimental and evolutionary science of human behavior--show that the central issue is not why selfish people act generously, but instead how genetic and cultural evolution has produced a species in which substantial numbers make sacrifices to uphold ethical norms and to help even total strangers. The authors describe how, for thousands of generations, cooperation with fellow group members has been essential to survival. Groups that created institutions to protect the civic-minded from exploitation by the selfish flourished and prevailed in conflicts with less cooperative groups.   Key to this process was the evolution of social emotions such as shame and guilt, and our capacity to internalize social norms so that acting ethically became a personal goal rather than simply a prudent way to avoid punishment. Using experimental, archaeological, genetic, and ethnographic data to calibrate models of the coevolution of genes and culture as well as prehistoric warfare and other forms of group competition, A Cooperative Species provides a compelling and novel account of how humans came to be moral and cooperative.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57481576907125,"sku":"9780691158167","price":30.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780691158167.jpg?v=1786089851"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-samuel-bowles.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}