题目 "I'll cooperate provided you cooperate"
主讲人 刘民权
时间 2000年10月20日（星期五）14:00－15:30
地点 北京大学中国经济研究中心致福轩
主讲人简介
南京大学霍普金斯－南京中心教授
"I'll cooperate provided you cooperate"
刘民权
南京大学霍普金斯－南京中心教授
In social interaction a person's behaviour may be bounded by a varietyof "commitment" in that she may sometimes suspend her relentless pursuit of selfinterest, contrary to what a "completely individualistic" person does. In a social situation requiring cooperation between two agents, one may agree to cooperate provided that the other cooperates. This is the assurance principle advanced by Sen. Professor Liu analyzes different shades of commitment of members on China's communes. He argues that, rather than being completely selfinterested, in general at least some members obeyed some assurance rules. However, typically not all members of a collective did. The presence of one or a few "completely individualistic" members often caused all not to cooperate. Depending on configurations of members' commitments, different outcomes of cooperation are, however, possible and were sometimes observed. The analysis has implications to current China. Although selfinterest is fundamental to a market economy, more developed and successful market economies have had an inter-woven set of selfinterest and non-selfinterest factors that together made their systems work. The cooperation problem on communes is here used as an example to show how these factors could be configured in a way that leads to cooperation.
