Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization

Call for Papers

As our societies increasingly grow into market societies, where markets extend beyond being mere tools of organizing economic activity into social and political spheres that were historically governed by nonmarket values, conversations concerning the role that markets should play in our society have intensified. In these conversations (both in the academy and in contemporary politics), there is a vibrant debate over whether or not markets corrupt social values and relations. Much of the academic debate concerning the morality of markets, however, has taken place outside of economics and has tended to rely on either philosophical accounts or qualitative explorations rather than quantitative studies of whether or not markets promote or corrupt morality. The more quantitative portion of the conversation is fairly young and there is not much of a consensus among these studies on whether or not markets corrupt our morals, the mechanisms through which markets might impact our morals, and the best strategies for exploring the relationship between markets and morality. With this special issue, we hope to further the conversation about the morality of markets by encouraging quantitative studies of how markets and market activity impact morality.

We invite for the submission of quantitative papers investigating moral behavior and markets, such as whether the market corrupt our moral behavior (which can be narrowly defined, such as trust, trustworthiness and deception, or be broadly defined) and the mechanisms through which markets might impact our morals and moral behehavior. We are also open to receiving submissions on the best strategies for exploring the relationship between markets and morality and other novel areas of quantitative investigations. We welcome submissions from other scientific fields (e.g. sociology, political science, anthropology).

We will receive submissions until December 31, 2021.

The editors are:

Ginny Choi (Mercatus Center at George Mason University)
gchoi@mercatus.gmu.edu

Virgil Storr (George Mason University)
vstorr@gmu.edu