The Economics of Rights, Co-operation and Welfare

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

   PDF

2. Spontaneous Order

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 1-9

3. Games

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 10-35

4. Coordination

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 36-57

5. Property

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 58-90

6. Possession

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 91-107

7. Reciprocity

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 108-125

8. Free Riders

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 126-148

9. Natural Law

   • Robert Sugden

   Pages 149-169

10. Rights, Co-operation and Welfare

    • Robert Sugden

    Pages 170-182

11. Afterword

    • Robert Sugden

    Pages 183-225

12. Back Matter

    Pages 226-243

    PDF

This is a new edition - with a substantial new introduction - of a book which has had a significant impact on economics, philosophy and political science. Robert Sugden shows how conventions of property, mutual aid, and voluntary supply of public goods can evolve spontaneously out of the interactions of self-interested individuals, and can become moral norms. Sugden was among the first social scientists to use evolutionary game theory. His approach remains distinctive in emphasizing psychological and cultural notions of salience.

• economics
• game theory
• interaction
• interest
• public goods
• welfare

• University of East Anglia, UK

  Robert Sugden

ROBERT SUGDEN is Professor of Economics at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His theoretical, experimental and philosophical work on social choice, choice under uncertainty, the foundations of decision and game theory, and the evolution of social conventions has been published in the leading journals of economics and philosophy.

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