Non-global social contracts: A note on inefficient social institutions

✍ Scribed by Robert A. Blewett; Roger D. Congleton

• Publisher: Springer US
• Year: 1983
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 418 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0048-5829
• DOI: 10.1007/bf00141077

✦ Synopsis

This paper explores some perverse features that can emerge when social contracts are moved from a social vacuum to a setting of social interdependence. In particular we note incentives that might exist in conjunction with externality problems that yield situations in which:

(1) social contracts reduce social wealth; (2) sub-global social contracts are Pareto inferior to the absence of social contracts; (3) there are no incentives for global social contracts.

While previous works emphasized the benefits of contracts, this paper focuses on their costs. A conclusion reached is that perhaps justice and efficiency demand not a single global social contract but rather a rich melange of sub-global contracts with appropriate interstices of anarchy.