It is increasingly common for social scientists to describe political processes as “path dependent.” The concept, however, is often employed without careful elaboration. This article conceptualizes path dependence as a social process grounded in a dynamic of “increasing returns.” Reviewing recent literature in economics and suggesting extensions to the world of politics, the article demonstrates that increasing returns processes are likely to be prevalent, and that good analytical foundations exist for exploring their causes and consequences. The investigation of increasing returns can provide a more rigorous framework for developing some of the key claims of recent scholarship in historical institutionalism: Specific patterns of timing and sequence matter; a wide range of social outcomes may be possible; large consequences may result from relatively small or contingent events; particular courses of action, once introduced, can be almost impossible to reverse; and consequently, political development is punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life.

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Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics

People like to help those who are helping them and to hurt those who are hurting them. Outcomes rejecting such motivations are called fairness equilibria. Outcomes are mutual-max when each person maximizes the other's material payoffs, and mutual-min when each person minimizes the other's payoffs. It is shown that every mutual-max or mutual-min Nash equilibrium is a fairness equilibrium. If payoffs are small, fairness equilibria are roughly the set of mutual-max and mutual-min outcomes; if payoffs are large, fairness equilibria are roughly the set of Nash equilibria. Several economic examples are considered and possible welfare implications of fairness are explored. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2117561.pdf

Incorporating Fairness into Game Theory and Economics

This paper reviews the literature on gender differences in economic experiments. In the three main sections, we identify robust differences in risk preferences, social (other-regarding) preferences, and competitive preferences. We also speculate on the source of these differences, as well as on their implications. Our hope is that this article will serve as a resource for those seeking to understand gender differences and to use as a starting point to illuminate the debate on gender-specific outcomes in the labor and goods markets.

/pdf/gender-differences-in-preferences-1wffy691ko.pdf

Gender Differences in Preferences

The authors address the role of marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments (CMEs). Their approach considers hypermedia CMEs to be large-scale (i.e., national or global) networked enviro...

/pdf/marketing-in-hypermedia-computer-mediated-environments-2ffhdnb9gv.pdf

Marketing in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations

Electronic networks of practice are computer-mediated discussion forums focused on problems of practice that enable individuals to exchange advice and ideas with others based on common interests. However, why individuals help strangers in these electronic networks is not well understood: there is no immediate benefit to the contributor, and free-riders are able to acquire the same knowledge as everyone else. To understand this paradox, we apply theories of collective action to examine how individual motivations and social capital influence knowledge contribution in electronic networks. This study reports on the activities of one electronic network supporting a professional legal association. Using archival, network, survey, and content analysis data, we empirically test a model of knowledge contribution. We find that people contribute their knowledge when they perceive that it enhances their professional reputations, when they have the experience to share, and when they are structurally embedded in the network. Surprisingly, contributions occur without regard to expectations of reciprocity from others or high levels of commitment to the network.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/25148667.pdf

Why should i share? examining social capital and knowledge contribution in electronic networks of practice

https://econweb.ucsd.edu/~jandreon/Econ264/papers/Marwell%20Ames%20JPubE%201981.pdf

Economists free ride, does anyone else?: Experiments on the provision of public goods, IV

Preface Acknowledgements 1. The critical mass and the problem of collective action 2. Building blocks: goods, groups and processes 3. The paradox of group size 4. The dynamics of production functions 5. Social networks: density, centralization and cliques 6. Selectivity in social networks 7. Reach and selectivity as strategies of recruitment 8. Unfinished business References Name index Subject index.

The critical mass in collective action

Collective action usually depends on a "critical mass" that behaves differently from typical group members. Sometimes the critical mass provides some level of the good for others who do nothing, wh...

/pdf/a-theory-of-the-critical-mass-i-interdependence-group-4znqhuy43w.pdf

A Theory of the Critical Mass. I. Interdependence, Group Heterogeneity, and the Production of Collective Action

For an experiment on the problem of collective action, randomly selected high school students were randomly assigned to groups which were confronted with an investment opportunity. Each subject could invest resources provided by the experimenter in either a private good, which returned a fixed amount of money to the individual per token invested, or a public good. The public good returned money to the group and, beyond a given provision point, returned much more money per token invested than did the private good. All money from the public good was divided according to a present formula. Thus, subjects could "free ride" on the public good, if other group members invested in it, by taking their share of it and keeping their own resources for themselves. Groups were randomly designated as either large or small, and unequal or equal in the distribution of interest and of resources within the group. Results indicate that the effects of free riding were much weaker than would be predicted from most economic the...

Experiments on the Provision of Public Goods. I. Resources, Interest, Group Size, and the Free-Rider Problem

Most analyses of collective action agree that overcoming the freerider problem requires organizing potential contributors, thus making their decisions interdependent. The potential for organizing depends on the social ties in the group, particularly on the overall density or frequency of ties, on the extent to which they are centralized in a few individuals, and on the costs of communicating and coordinating actions through these ties. Mathematical analysis and computer simulations extend a formal microsocial theory of interdependent collective action to treat social networks and organization costs. As expected, the overall density of social ties in a group improves its prospects for collective action. More significant, because less expected, are the findings that show that the centralization of network ties always has a positive effect on collective action and that the negative effect of costs on collective action declines as the group's resource or interest heterogeneity increases. These nonobvious resu...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2780252.pdf

Gerald Marwell

Papers

Economists free ride, does anyone else?: Experiments on the provision of public goods, IV

The critical mass in collective action

A Theory of the Critical Mass. I. Interdependence, Group Heterogeneity, and the Production of Collective Action

Experiments on the Provision of Public Goods. I. Resources, Interest, Group Size, and the Free-Rider Problem

Social Networks and Collective Action: A Theory of the Critical Mass. III