Signaling Goodness: Social Rules and Public Choice

Glossary

Glossary altruism: We focus on the motivation for behavior rather than its results. Altruism is defined as concern for the well-being of others, or in the language of economics, having the utility of others in one's own utility function . We assume the usual properties: the marginal utility of the well-being of others is positive and diminishing. We also assume that altruism is limited in the sense that at comparable income levels the marginal utility ofthe income of a person and his family is greater to him than the marginal utility of the income of anybody else; that is, he values the well-being of his family more than he values anybody else's well-being. Altruism is further narrowed by being concerned only with the utility of people directly affected by one's actions. For all of our purposes altruism will not include helping somebody because of the approval ofsome other person whom one loves. asymmetric "goodness": For an important class of issues one signals "goodness " by advocating one side of the issue but not the other. These issues are those where group survival, compassion, and externalities produce advocacy on only one side of a political issue. conscience: An internalization of social norms, a desire to follow social rules because one feels better by so doing. externality: A consequence to somebody not involved in making a decision. free-rider problem: A problem generated when a large group (not necessarily the total population) consumes a public good and there is no way to exclude a consumer who does not pay for the good. Clearly, this problem holds for self-interested individuals. It also holds for altruists who value their own family's utility more than the utility of others. Both would prefer that others pay for the public good. "goodness": Trustworthiness toward people not in one's group as opposed to trustworthiness toward people in one's own group. imitation: The imitation of another's political positions is, we believe, a signal that one wishes to engage in reciprocal relations with that individual. marginal x: If x is, say, utility, marginal x is roughly the change in utility with a change in y (say income). A person maximizes utility by having the marginal values ofy the same across all his consumption options. morality signaling: Signaling one's trustworthiness to members of one's group who practice the group social rules by advocating those social rules and sig237 238 Glossary naling to others general trustworthiness by being likely practitioners of those social rules. operational social rules: Social rules that together with their enforcement machinery are such that individuals on the whole find it in their interest to obey them. public good: Commodities that provide benefits to a large group of people at the same time. One person's consumption of the good does not detract from the benefits simultaneously accruing to other individuals from the same good. It should be emphasized that a public good need not require all to share its benefits; only a large group. reciprocity: One person doing a favor for another person in response to an earlier favor from that person. The time delay is an important part of the concept as we use it. regression coefficients: Also symbolized by b. The magnitude of the impact of one variable on another, holding the effects of other controlled variables constant. For our usual purpose there are only two important characteristics : (1) its sign; (2) whether the t value is large enough that it is statistically significant, that is, the sign could not have been produced by chance sampling fluctuations if there were no true relationship. We sometimes include regression equations. The numbers in those equations are the respective regression coefficients of the independent variable (next to the coefficient) on the dependent variable (on the left-hand side of the equation). self-interest (economist's): Behavior that maximizes a utility function that does not include the well-being of non-family members as an argument. self-interest (evolutionary): Behavior that maximizes in the long run the survival ofa given trait possessed by an individual. self-interest (narrow): Voting in terms of the consequences of the policies of candidates if their programs were enacted. signaling: Indicating to someone else by some present act how one would behave in the future for that same or a different act. survival (group): The survival of the group by way of individuals within the group possessing a particular trait. Maximizing group survival...