Louis Putterman
Biographic Data
| ID | 280855 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Louis Putterman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Louis |
| FAMILY NAME | Putterman |
| SIGNATURE | PUTTERMAN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brown University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7825-2791 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 51 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 136 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
What explains trust in institutions? Multi-disciplinary evidence from an international survey
In many countries, trust in institutions has eroded, undermining civic engagement, social cohesion, and political stability. This study analyzes the determinants of trust in government, civil servants, the judicial system, and the police, drawing on representative samples from six OECD countries (Germany, Italy, Japan, Slovenia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) between 2017 and early 2020. It employs survey data, experimental methods, a…
The determinants of trust: Findings from large, representative samples in six OECD countries
Trust is key for economic and social development. But why do we trust others? We study the motives behind trust in strangers using an experimental trust game played by 7236 participants, in six samples representative of the general populations of Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the UK and the USA. We examine the broadest range of potential determinants of trustor sending to date, including risk tolerance, preferences for redistribution, and co…
Algorithmic Leviathan or Individual Choice: Choosing Sanctioning Regimes in the Face of Observational Error
Laboratory experiments are a promising tool for studying how competing institutional arrangements perform and what determines preferences between them. Reliance on enforcement by peers versus formal authorities is a key example. That people incur costs to punish free riders is a well‐documented departure from non‐behavioural game‐theoretic predictions, but how robust is peer punishment to informational problems? We report experimental evidence th…
Cooperation and trust, supportable by our social natures, foster synergy of private, public, and civic sectors
The gains in economic welfare achieved over the last several generations depend on social as much as they do on technological innovations. Although much of the technological and commercial progress in question was driven mainly by self-interest and competition, effective functioning of governmental and legal systems and provision of public goods were crucial to social and economic progress, and these depended partly on social norms and motivation…
Transition to agriculture and first state presence: A global analysis
State history and economic development: Evidence from six millennia
The presence of a state is one of the most reliable historical predictors of social and economic development. In this article, we complete the coding of an extant indicator of state presence from 3500 BCE forward for almost all but the smallest countries of the world today. We outline a theoretical framework where accumulated state experience increases aggregate productivity in individual countries but where newer or relatively inexperienced stat…
Democratic, Accountable States Are Impossible Without “Behavioral” Humans
Accountable, democratic government is impossible assuming that the self‐interested, rational individuals of traditional economic theory are the only available citizens and officials. Approaching near realization of such a form of government, as occurred in parts of the world during recent generations, required reconfiguring autocratic states with the aid of the actual human impulses that underlie attraction to norms of fairness, capacities to coo…
The Rational Choice Controversy
Pathologies of Rational Choice Theory , a book written by Donald Green and Ian Shapiro and published in 1994, excited much controversy among political scientists and promoted a dialogue among them that was printed in a double issue of the journal Critical Review in 1995. This new book reproduces thirteen essays from the journal written by senior scholars in the field, along with an introduction by the editor of the journal, Jeffrey Friedman, and …
Play It Again: Partner Choice, Reputation Building and Learning From Finitely Repeated Dilemma Games
Often the fuller the reputational record people's actions generate, the greater their incentive to earn a reputation for cooperation. However, inability to “wipe clean” one's past record might trap some agents who initially underappreciate reputation's value in a cycle of bad behaviour, whereas a clean slate could have been followed by their “reforming” themselves. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate what subjects learn from playing a fini…
Preferences for Redistribution and Perception of Fairness: An Experimental Study: Preferences for Redistribution: An Experiment
We conduct a laboratory experiment to study how demand for redistribution of income depends on self-interest, insurance motives, and social concerns relating to inequality and efficiency. Our choice environments feature large groups of subjects and real-world framing, and differ with respect to the source of inequality (earned or arbitrary), the cost of taxation to the decision maker, the dead-weight loss of taxation, uncertainty about own pretax…
Economic Nature of the Firm: A Reader
Institutions and Behavior: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Democracy
A novel experiment is used to show that the effect of a policy on the level of cooperation is greater when it is chosen democratically by the subjects than when it is exogenously imposed. In contrast to the previous literature, our experimental design allows us to control for selection effects (e.g., those who choose the policy may be affected differently by it). Our finding implies that democratic institutions may affect behavior directly in add…
Post-1500 Population Flows and The Long-Run Determinants of Economic Growth and Inequality
We construct a matrix showing the share of the year 2000 population in every country that is descended from people in different source countries in the year 1500. Using the matrix to adjust indicators of early development so they reflect the history of a population's ancestors rather than the history of the place they live today greatly improves the ability of those indicators to predict current GDP. The variance of early development history of a…
The Economic Nature of the Firm: A Reader
This book brings together classic writings on the economic nature and organization of firms, including works by Ronald Coase, Oliver Williamson, and Michael Jensen and William Meckling, as well as more recent contributions by Paul Milgrom, Bengt Holmstrom, John Roberts, Oliver Hart, Luigi Zingales, and others. Part I explores the general theme of the firm's nature and place in the market economy; Part II addresses the question of which transactio…
Human Nature, Communication and Trust
The facts that people can sometimes commit to fulfill promises even when there are no binding penalties and that kind and trusting acts are often reciprocated by trustworthy ones make possible forms of group action that might be ruled out in a hypothetical world of perfectly opportunistic individuals. I discuss some new experiments with a modified Berg, Dickhaut and McCabe (1995) ‘ trust game’ that provide evidence that most subjects adhere to no…
Agriculture, Diffusion and Development: Ripple Effects of the Neolithic Revolution
Are the effects of the Neolithic revolution still impacting on incomes across the world today? I find strong support for this proposition using new, country‐specific estimates of the timing of the agricultural transition and provide evidence that the differences are due to how technological diffusion is accounted for. A correction for world migrations since 1500 significantly improves the fit. Transition year also helps to explain income in 1500 …
Social Capability, History and the Economies of Communist and Postcommunist States
Communication and punishment in voluntary contribution experiments
Agriculture, Diffusion, and Development: Ripple Effects of the Neolithic Revolution
Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry and Efficiency
We study the. Incentive effects of endogenous group formation in a voluntary contributon experiment. Subjects are given information on the past contributions of others and allowed to express a preference for partners. On the basis of the stated preferences new groups are formed. We find that the opportunity to form new groups increases both contributions and efficiency. \\Ve also compare the regrouping mechanism with a mechanism allowing targeted…
Share and share alike? Gender-pairing, personality, and cognitive ability as determinants of giving
States and Markets: The Advantage of an Early Start
Can an evolutionary approach to development predict post‐war economic growth
Might differences in levels of development prior to the era of industrialisation explain some of the dramatic differences in rates of economic growth across developing countries in recent decades? This article explores the logic behind such a conjecture, and presents evidence that it is true, using population and agrarian densities as proxies for early development. Basic growth regressions are estimated for a sample of developing countries in 196…
China’s State-Owned Enterprises: Their Role, Job Creation, and Efficiency in Long-Term Perspective
The Contribution of Collective Landownership to China’s Economic Transition and Rural Industrialization: A Resource Allocation Model
On some implications of evolutionary psychology for the study of preferences and institutions
On the past and future of china's township and village-owned enterprises
Share and share alike? Gender-pairing, personality, and cognitive ability as determinants of giving
Agriculture, Diffusion and Development: Ripple Effects of the Neolithic Revolution
Are the effects of the Neolithic revolution still impacting on incomes across the world today? I find strong support for this proposition using new, country‐specific estimates of the timing of the agricultural transition and provide evidence that the differences are due to how technological diffusion is accounted for. A correction for world migrations since 1500 significantly improves the fit. Transition year also helps to explain income in 1500 …
Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry and Efficiency
We study the. Incentive effects of endogenous group formation in a voluntary contributon experiment. Subjects are given information on the past contributions of others and allowed to express a preference for partners. On the basis of the stated preferences new groups are formed. We find that the opportunity to form new groups increases both contributions and efficiency. \\Ve also compare the regrouping mechanism with a mechanism allowing targeted…
On some implications of evolutionary psychology for the study of preferences and institutions
A modified collective agriculture in rural growth-with-equity: Reconsidering the private, unimodal solution
Dualism and Reform in China
The incentive problem and the demise of team farming in China
China’s State-Owned Enterprises: Their Role, Job Creation, and Efficiency in Long-Term Perspective
The Contribution of Collective Landownership to China’s Economic Transition and Rural Industrialization: A Resource Allocation Model
Economic reform and smallholder agriculture in Tanzania: A discussion of recent market liberalization, road rehabilitation, and technology dissemination efforts
Preindustrial and Postwar Economic Development: Is There a Link
Everybody knows now that the “hardware” dimension of development—the physical infrastructure, for example—is a lot easier to put in place than the “software” to keep it operable, which depends on local skills and institutions. (United Nations Development Programme)1
Continuity and Change in China's Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective
Journal Article Continuity and Change in China's Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective. Get access Continuity and Change in China's Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective. By Putterman (Louis). (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press/OUP USA, 1993. Pp. ix + 379. £37.50 hardback. ISBN 0 19 507872 1.) Marion E. Jones Marion E. Jones School of Oriental and African Studies Search for other works by t…
Productivity consequences of alternative land division methods in China's decollectivization An econometric analysis
Group Farming and Work Incentives in Collective-Era China
This article will address the question of work incentives under the systems of group farming that operated in China between 1955 and the early 1980s. Emphasis will be given to material incentives at both individual and group levels, although other types of incentive will be touched upon. The article attempts to answer two major questions: (1) What work incentives were operative in Chinese group farming between the mid-1950s and the adoption of ba…
Transition to agriculture and first state presence: A global analysis
Commodification of Labor Follows Commodification of the Firm on a Theorem of the New Institutional Economics
China's political economy: The quest for development since 1949
Ration Subsidies and Incentives in the Pre-Reform Chinese Commune
A central feature of the "egalitarianism" said to have undermined work incentives in Chinese agricultural produ ction teams during the 1960s and 1970s was the distribution of grain rations independently of work contribution. This paper analyzes two m odels of grain rationing, one drawn from existing theoretical literat ure and the other perhaps more closely based on Chinese practice. It finds that a scheme of the type commonly depicted was more c…
Democratic, Accountable States Are Impossible Without “Behavioral” Humans
Accountable, democratic government is impossible assuming that the self‐interested, rational individuals of traditional economic theory are the only available citizens and officials. Approaching near realization of such a form of government, as occurred in parts of the world during recent generations, required reconfiguring autocratic states with the aid of the actual human impulses that underlie attraction to norms of fairness, capacities to coo…
Play It Again: Partner Choice, Reputation Building and Learning From Finitely Repeated Dilemma Games
Often the fuller the reputational record people's actions generate, the greater their incentive to earn a reputation for cooperation. However, inability to “wipe clean” one's past record might trap some agents who initially underappreciate reputation's value in a cycle of bad behaviour, whereas a clean slate could have been followed by their “reforming” themselves. In a laboratory experiment, we investigate what subjects learn from playing a fini…
Institutional Boundaries, Structural Change, and Economic Reform in China: An Introduction
Is China on its way to becoming the first centrally planned economy to successfully navigate the transition to a market-based system under Communist auspices? Or have reforms permanently stalled at an inefficient juncture, halfway between the two worlds? Is general resource mobility in response to scarcity and demand becoming China's order of the day, or do the privileged positions of state industry and of those who populate its payrolls constitu…
Village communities, cooperation, and inequality in Tanzania: Comments on Collier et al
The New China: Comparative economic development in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong
Is a democratic collective agriculture possible
Population and Food Dynamics: A Caloric Measurement in Egypt
Post-World War II studies of Egypt's economy devote considerable attention to her population growth and agricultural development. Such attention is necessary in that Egypt, (though) so limited in its habitable land, has experienced a quadrupling of population during the present century; and, as its most important sector is still agricultural, more than half of that population is concentrated in rural areas. Therefore, studies have focused on the …
Population and Food Dynamics: A Caloric Measurement in Egypt
Post-World War II studies of Egypt's economy devote considerable attention to her population growth and agricultural development. Such attention is necessary in that Egypt, (though) so limited in its habitable land, has experienced a quadrupling of population during the present century; and, as its most important sector is still agricultural, more than half of that population is concentrated in rural areas. Therefore, studies have focused on the …
Is a democratic collective agriculture possible
Economic Motivation and the Transition to Collective Socialism: Its Application to Tanzania
Most analyses of the problems of collective production in Tanzania have focused upon the political, social, and cultural contexts within which attempts to establish that organisational mode took place.1Economic dimensions have taken a central place, as well, but the primary concern here has been the socio-economic and the political-economic i.e. the influence of stratification and of the opposing interests of the various classes. That brand of co…
A modified collective agriculture in rural growth-with-equity: Reconsidering the private, unimodal solution
Tanzanian and african socialism: Comment on Weaver and Kronemer
Extrinsic versus intrinsic problems of agricultural cooperation: Anti‐incentivism in Tanzania and China
Peasant willingness to engage in collective farming, and the efficiency of collective farms once established, may be preconditioned on local self‐determination, participatory control, discriminating work incentives, and external manoeuvrability. In the absence of such preconditions, whether or not there exist economies of scale sufficient to offset effectively minimised incentive problems cannot be determined. 'Anti‐incentivism', bureaucratic con…
The incentive problem and the demise of team farming in China
Ration Subsidies and Incentives in the Pre-Reform Chinese Commune
A central feature of the "egalitarianism" said to have undermined work incentives in Chinese agricultural produ ction teams during the 1960s and 1970s was the distribution of grain rations independently of work contribution. This paper analyzes two m odels of grain rationing, one drawn from existing theoretical literat ure and the other perhaps more closely based on Chinese practice. It finds that a scheme of the type commonly depicted was more c…
Group Farming and Work Incentives in Collective-Era China
This article will address the question of work incentives under the systems of group farming that operated in China between 1955 and the early 1980s. Emphasis will be given to material incentives at both individual and group levels, although other types of incentive will be touched upon. The article attempts to answer two major questions: (1) What work incentives were operative in Chinese group farming between the mid-1950s and the adoption of ba…
Commodification of Labor Follows Commodification of the Firm on a Theorem of the New Institutional Economics
China's political economy: The quest for development since 1949
Village communities, cooperation, and inequality in Tanzania: Comments on Collier et al
The New China: Comparative economic development in Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong
Agricultural Producer Co‐Operatives
Addresses the issues of work incentives under agricultural producer cooperatives, decision on the membership size, and the process of voluntary choice of this institutional form by potential cooperators.
Food insecurity and the social division of labour in Tanzania, 1919–85
Institutional Boundaries, Structural Change, and Economic Reform in China: An Introduction
Is China on its way to becoming the first centrally planned economy to successfully navigate the transition to a market-based system under Communist auspices? Or have reforms permanently stalled at an inefficient juncture, halfway between the two worlds? Is general resource mobility in response to scarcity and demand becoming China's order of the day, or do the privileged positions of state industry and of those who populate its payrolls constitu…
Dualism and Reform in China
Productivity consequences of alternative land division methods in China's decollectivization An econometric analysis
State and Market in Development: Synergy or Rivalry
The State and the Market in Development, the Editors. Part 1 Alternative Views of the Problem: Varieties of Policy in Third World, G.Ohlin Against Minimalism, P.Streeten Some Thoughts on Plan and Market in the Aftermath of State Socialism in Eastern Europe, A.Nove. Part 2 State Action and the World Economy in Comparative Perspective: A Theory of Government Intervention in Late Industrialization, A.Amsden The Role of Government and Markets in the …
The Supply of Labour by Individuals to a Chinese Collective Farm: The Case of Dahe Commune
We provide the first econometric tests of the theory of individual labour supply in a collective farm on data at the individual level. The data are for members of five production teams in a commune in Hebei Province in 1979. Our switching regressions model does not provide evidence of a significant labour supply response to differences in anticipated earnings. This failure may be indirect evidence of "under-differentiation' of payments, due to eg…
Continuity and Change in China's Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective
Journal Article Continuity and Change in China's Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective. Get access Continuity and Change in China's Rural Development: Collective and Reform Eras in Perspective. By Putterman (Louis). (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press/OUP USA, 1993. Pp. ix + 379. £37.50 hardback. ISBN 0 19 507872 1.) Marion E. Jones Marion E. Jones School of Oriental and African Studies Search for other works by t…
Economic reform and smallholder agriculture in Tanzania: A discussion of recent market liberalization, road rehabilitation, and technology dissemination efforts
Rational Choice Controversy
China's collectivisation puzzle: A new resolution
According to total factor productivity trends in Chinese agriculture, China achieved productivity gains both when collectivising (1954-58) and when decollectivising (1979-84) its agriculture. If the productivity gains from decollectivisation were due mainly to eliminating the incentive problems of collective farms, how the initial collectivisation could also have been associated with gains in productivity presents a major historical puzzle, We su…
On the past and future of china's township and village-owned enterprises
Economics (41 works) · Political science (29 works) · Law (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Geography (16 works) · China (15 works) · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies (15 works) · Agriculture (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies (12 works)