한겨레신문 2011년 4월 21일자 기사 “이기심보다 정의가 큰 역할…주류 경제학 틀렸다”
‘경제학 혁신’ 학술회에 온 볼스 교수
세계 경제체제 붕괴 등의 비관적 전망들이 가득한데 그 홀로 너무 낙관적인 것은 아닐까? 노학자는 망설임 없이 바로 대답했다. “1920년대 대공황이 일어난 뒤에 복지국가가 나왔다는 점을 기억하라. 문제는 정치적 리더십이다. 금융개혁 등 다양한 방법을 통해 경제의 불확실성을 줄이고 불공정·불평등을 해소할 수 있는 정치적 리더십이 필요하다.”
‘경제학 혁신’ 학술회에 온 볼스 교수
세계 자본주의 경제 체제가 심각한 위기에 처했다는 사실을 확인시켜줬던 2007년 미국발 금융위기는, 코앞에 닥친 위기조차 알아채지 못했던 경제학에 보낸 엄중한 경고장이기도 했다. 그래서 요즘 경제학계에선 ‘혁신’이 화두다. 장하준 케임브리지대 교수에게 쏟아졌던 관심처럼, ‘효용가치’를 그 무엇보다 우선시하는 주류 경제학의 입장과 다른 비주류(heterodox) 경제학이 새롭게 조명받는 것은 이런 경제학계의 혁신 움직임 중 하나로 풀이할 수 있다.
미국 샌타페이연구소 새뮤얼 볼스(72·사진) 교수는 경제학이라는 분과 학문의 틀에서 벗어나 교육과 민주주의, 진화 등 다양한 영역을 넘나들며 대안적·실천적 경제 이론을 만들려고 노력하는 세계적 석학으로 꼽힌다. 제자인 최정규 경북대 교수와 함께 인간의 이타적 본성에 대한 논문을 저명 과학저널 <사이언스>에 싣기도 했다. 지난 14일 한국사회경제학회가 대구에서 ‘글로벌 경제위기와 경제학의 혁신’이란 주제로 연 국제학술회의에 참석한 볼스 교수를 만났다. 새로운 경제학은 어떠해야 하느냐는 질문에 그는 자신이 깊게 천착해 온 주제인 ‘인간 본성’에 대한 연구를 소개했다.
볼스는 주류 경제학을 움직이게 한 동력인 ‘인간은 이기적’이라는 전제 자체가 틀렸다고 말한다. “모든 개인이 이기적이라고 주장한 것은 경제학자 집단이 유일했다. 그러나 1990년대 들어 경제학계에서 펼쳐진 여러 실험을 통해 그런 신화는 깨졌다.” 이를테면 탁자 위에 놓인 돈을 사람들이 어떻게 나눠 갖나 살펴보는 실험에서, 실험 참가자들은 자발적으로 공평하게 돈을 나눴다. 기존 경제학이 설정했던 ‘인간은 이기적으로 행동한다’는 가설이 뒤집혀진 것이다. 그 뒤 다른 실험들에서도 이런 결과는 일관되게 나타났고, 결국 인간은 ‘호혜적 이타성’을 지닌 존재라는 사실이 드러났다고 한다. 볼스는 “경제학 지식이 인간 사회의 상식에 마침내 자리를 내준 것”이라고 말했다.
생물학은 마지막 장벽이었다. 다윈주의에 입각한 자연선택이론은 이기적 개체가 경쟁에서 살아남는다고 보기 때문이다. 그러나 진화생물학 영역의 연구들이 이 역시 뒤집었다고 한다. 인간은 집단중심적 동물이어서, 집단을 위해 협동하는 이타적 개인이 많은 집단이 그렇지 않은 집단보다 자연선택에 성공해왔다는 이론이 설득력 있게 제시된 것이다. 볼스는 “경쟁이 진보를 가져오는 게 아니라 협동이 진보를 가져온다는 점에서 현대 생물학은 경제학에 교훈을 주고 있다”고 말했다. 올해 내놓은 그의 새 책 <협동적 종>은 이에 대한 그의 연구를 담고 있다고 한다.
볼스는 “이타적·협동적인 인간 본성에 대한 새로운 연구는, 경제학과 공공정책에 아주 강한 시사점을 주고 있다”고 말한다. 그동안 경제학의 영역이 아니라고 치부해버렸던 ‘공정과 정의’가 새로운 경제학의 가장 중요한 요소라는 주장이다. ‘경제적 인간’의 관점에서 경제를 분석하고 공공정책을 제시했던 경제학자들은 금전적 수단을 통해 인간 행동을 움직이려 했기 때문에 실패했다는 지적이기도 하다.
그는 이스라엘의 미취학 어린이 보육시설에 대한 실험을 사례로 들었다. 아이를 찾으러 오는 부모들이 자주 지각하는 것이 골치였는데, 한 경제학자가 보육시설의 절반은 지각에 벌금을 물리도록 하고 나머지는 그냥 놔두는 실험을 하자고 제안했다. ‘금전적 불이익이 지각을 줄일 것’이란 예상과 달리 결과는 정반대였다. 벌금제를 실시하지 않은 시설들에서는 지각 비율이 전과 크게 다르지 않았지만, 벌금제를 실시한 시설들에서는 지각 비율이 곱절로 늘어난 것이다. 벌금제가 ‘지각을 돈으로 살 수 있는 것’이라는 인식을 가져다줘 오히려 사람들의 자발적인 의지를 감소시켰던 것이다.
볼스는 “인간 본성의 새로운 발견은 내가 한평생 천착해왔던 민주주의·평등주의 정책들이 정치적으로 충분히 실현 가능하다는 근거를 제공한다”고 말했다. 인간은 이기적 인간이란 관점이 아니라 공정과 정의를 추구하는 인간 본성에 기댄 공공정책이 펼쳐질 때, 시간은 오래 걸리겠지만 뿌리 깊은 불평등과 모순이 점차 해소되는 방향으로 나아갈 것이라는 전망이다.
세계 경제체제 붕괴 등의 비관적 전망들이 가득한데 그 홀로 너무 낙관적인 것은 아닐까? 노학자는 망설임 없이 바로 대답했다. “1920년대 대공황이 일어난 뒤에 복지국가가 나왔다는 점을 기억하라. 문제는 정치적 리더십이다. 금융개혁 등 다양한 방법을 통해 경제의 불확실성을 줄이고 불공정·불평등을 해소할 수 있는 정치적 리더십이 필요하다.”
대구/글·사진 최원형 기자 circle@hani.co.kr
■ ‘경제학 혁신’ 학술대회는
‘비주류 경제학 대안’ 초점…미·영 등 학자 80여명 참여
한국사회경제학회가 연 이번 국제학술대회에는 80여명의 학자들이 몰려, 경제학의 혁신과 대안에 대한 커다란 관심을 반영했다. 새뮤얼 볼스를 비롯해 피터 스콧 미국 매사추세츠대 교수, 사이먼 모훈 영국 런던대 교수, 파스칼 프티 프랑스 파리13대학 교수, 신장섭 싱가포르국립대 교수 등 8개국에서 13명의 유명 국외 학자들이 참여하기도 했다. 학술대회의 내용은 금융위기에 대한 진단과 분석, 이에 따라 경제학, 특히 비주류 경제학이 어떤 새로운 대안을 제시할 수 있을까에 초점이 맞춰졌다. 최원형 기자
참고1:
MACHIAVELLI'S MISTAKE: WHY GOOD LAWS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR GOOD CITIZENS
Samuel Bowles is referenced in the Shiller Article from this morning. We found a summary of his lectures given at Yale as well as the paper referenced. (Emphasis is mine.)
Precis of Bowles lecture series entitled "Machiavelli's Mistake" I. Moral Sentiments and Material Interests (Tuesday 19th January)
The classical thinkers from Aristotle to Aquinas, Rousseau, and Burke recognized the cultivation of civic virtue not only as the test of good governance, but also as its essential foundation. Machiavelli and Hobbes broke with this Aristotelian tradition. Readers of Machiavelli's Discourses learned that “all men are wicked ... hunger makes them industrious, laws make them good.” Adam Smith's invisible hand provided a decentralized model for how this constitutional alchemy might be accomplished. Good institutions thus came to displace good citizens as the sine qua non of good government. Prices would do the work of morals.
This classical economists approach – now the canonical model of policy-making in economics-- now does not ignore moral behavior, but instead assumes it to be unaffected by incentive-based policies designed to harness self-interest. Along with civic virtue, explicit incentives and constraints could thus contribute additively to good government. The classical writers did not worry that laws designed to induce “wicked” citizens to act as if they were good might induce even the good to act as if they were wicked.
They should have worried. Experimental and other evidence show that while most individuals are far from wicked, treating people as if they were often crowds out the common generous, ethical, and reciprocal behaviors upon which the functioning of modern liberal democratic societies depend.
II. Is liberalism a parasite on tradition? (Thursday 21st January)
The parasitic liberalism thesis holds that markets and other institutions endorsed by liberals depend on family-based, religious and other traditional social norms that are endangered by these very institutions. Liberal society thus fails Rawls’ test of “stability:” it does not “generate its own supportive moral attitudes.” Experimental evidence presented in Lecture I, provides support for the idea. I represent the thesis in a model of the dynamics of institutional and cultural change, indicating the conditions under which the cultural dynamic of liberal society leads to economic dysfunction, instability and eventually collapse. I then provide surprising cross-cultural evidence that is inconsistent with the implications of the model. Liberal societies are distinctive in their civic cultures, exhibiting levels of generosity, fairmindedness, and civic involvement that distinguish them from non-liberal societies. The parasitic liberalism thesis fails not because it misunderstands the cultural consequences of markets, but rather because it overrates the benign contribution of tradition to the moral underpinnings of liberal institutions, and underrates the contribution of the liberal state and other non-market aspects of the liberal social order to the flourishing of these civic virtues.
III. Machiavelli 's Mistake: Do good fences make good (enough) neighbors? (Monday 25th January)
Two empirical puzzles show that some incentives work almost exactly as conventional economic theory predicts while others backfire. Under what conditions, then, can prices do the work of morals (as Bentham, Smith and others proposed)? Unraveling these puzzles and answering this question requires an understanding of the causal mechanisms by which material incentives crowd out moral motives. Experimental and other evidence suggests that explicit incentives and social motivations may be less than additive due to individual desires for autonomy, self esteem and fairness, which may be compromised by incentives. The material incentives favored by economists can also crowd out institutions that provide at least second best governance of social dilemmas.
How should a sophisticated hypothetical social engineer – that is, one who is aware of the motivational and institutional crowding out problem – design policies and institutions? Three results are demonstrated. First the optimal use of incentives may be either greater or less in the presence of motivational crowding out compared to a case where it is absent. Second, cultural market failures are pervasive, and result in overuse of markets even under ideal conditions for (Coasean) bargaining in the design of property rights and other institutions. Finally, a new second best theorem is proposed: the better definition of property rights and other policies considered by economists to improve incentives may degrade economic performance when they crowd out ethical motivations and alternative governance institutions. A closing coda reflects on the value of a more intimate engagement between the political theory and philosophy of good governance on the one hand and the sciences of human cognition and behavior on the other.
And Finanally here is a copy of Bowles paper entitled "MACHIAVELLI'S MISTAKE: WHY GOOD LAWS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR GOOD CITIZENS" Political philosophers from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Edmund Burke recognized the cultivation of civic virtue not only as the test of good government, but also as its essential foundation. “Lawgivers make the citizen good by inculcating habits in them,” Aristotle had written in the Ethics. “It is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”(Aristotle, (1962):103) Early in the sixteenth century, Nicolò Machiavelli gave rather different advice: “Anyone who would order the laws of a republic must assume that all men are wicked (rei) ... it is said that hunger and poverty make them industrious, laws make them good.” (Machiavelli, (1984):69-70). The task of government for Machiavelli was to not to make citizens moral but rather to induce citizens motivated by what he termed the “natural and ordinary humors” to act as if they were good. A century and a half later, Hobbes asked how the potentially destructive consequences of the autonomous pursuit of individual gain might be constrained by the authority of a sovereign ruler.
Full PDF
* * * * *
Precis of Bowles lecture series entitled "Machiavelli's Mistake" I. Moral Sentiments and Material Interests (Tuesday 19th January)
The classical thinkers from Aristotle to Aquinas, Rousseau, and Burke recognized the cultivation of civic virtue not only as the test of good governance, but also as its essential foundation. Machiavelli and Hobbes broke with this Aristotelian tradition. Readers of Machiavelli's Discourses learned that “all men are wicked ... hunger makes them industrious, laws make them good.” Adam Smith's invisible hand provided a decentralized model for how this constitutional alchemy might be accomplished. Good institutions thus came to displace good citizens as the sine qua non of good government. Prices would do the work of morals.
This classical economists approach – now the canonical model of policy-making in economics-- now does not ignore moral behavior, but instead assumes it to be unaffected by incentive-based policies designed to harness self-interest. Along with civic virtue, explicit incentives and constraints could thus contribute additively to good government. The classical writers did not worry that laws designed to induce “wicked” citizens to act as if they were good might induce even the good to act as if they were wicked.
They should have worried. Experimental and other evidence show that while most individuals are far from wicked, treating people as if they were often crowds out the common generous, ethical, and reciprocal behaviors upon which the functioning of modern liberal democratic societies depend.
II. Is liberalism a parasite on tradition? (Thursday 21st January)
The parasitic liberalism thesis holds that markets and other institutions endorsed by liberals depend on family-based, religious and other traditional social norms that are endangered by these very institutions. Liberal society thus fails Rawls’ test of “stability:” it does not “generate its own supportive moral attitudes.” Experimental evidence presented in Lecture I, provides support for the idea. I represent the thesis in a model of the dynamics of institutional and cultural change, indicating the conditions under which the cultural dynamic of liberal society leads to economic dysfunction, instability and eventually collapse. I then provide surprising cross-cultural evidence that is inconsistent with the implications of the model. Liberal societies are distinctive in their civic cultures, exhibiting levels of generosity, fairmindedness, and civic involvement that distinguish them from non-liberal societies. The parasitic liberalism thesis fails not because it misunderstands the cultural consequences of markets, but rather because it overrates the benign contribution of tradition to the moral underpinnings of liberal institutions, and underrates the contribution of the liberal state and other non-market aspects of the liberal social order to the flourishing of these civic virtues.
III. Machiavelli 's Mistake: Do good fences make good (enough) neighbors? (Monday 25th January)
Two empirical puzzles show that some incentives work almost exactly as conventional economic theory predicts while others backfire. Under what conditions, then, can prices do the work of morals (as Bentham, Smith and others proposed)? Unraveling these puzzles and answering this question requires an understanding of the causal mechanisms by which material incentives crowd out moral motives. Experimental and other evidence suggests that explicit incentives and social motivations may be less than additive due to individual desires for autonomy, self esteem and fairness, which may be compromised by incentives. The material incentives favored by economists can also crowd out institutions that provide at least second best governance of social dilemmas.
How should a sophisticated hypothetical social engineer – that is, one who is aware of the motivational and institutional crowding out problem – design policies and institutions? Three results are demonstrated. First the optimal use of incentives may be either greater or less in the presence of motivational crowding out compared to a case where it is absent. Second, cultural market failures are pervasive, and result in overuse of markets even under ideal conditions for (Coasean) bargaining in the design of property rights and other institutions. Finally, a new second best theorem is proposed: the better definition of property rights and other policies considered by economists to improve incentives may degrade economic performance when they crowd out ethical motivations and alternative governance institutions. A closing coda reflects on the value of a more intimate engagement between the political theory and philosophy of good governance on the one hand and the sciences of human cognition and behavior on the other.
* * * * *
And Finanally here is a copy of Bowles paper entitled "MACHIAVELLI'S MISTAKE: WHY GOOD LAWS ARE NO SUBSTITUTE FOR GOOD CITIZENS" Political philosophers from Aristotle to Thomas Aquinas, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Edmund Burke recognized the cultivation of civic virtue not only as the test of good government, but also as its essential foundation. “Lawgivers make the citizen good by inculcating habits in them,” Aristotle had written in the Ethics. “It is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.”(Aristotle, (1962):103) Early in the sixteenth century, Nicolò Machiavelli gave rather different advice: “Anyone who would order the laws of a republic must assume that all men are wicked (rei) ... it is said that hunger and poverty make them industrious, laws make them good.” (Machiavelli, (1984):69-70). The task of government for Machiavelli was to not to make citizens moral but rather to induce citizens motivated by what he termed the “natural and ordinary humors” to act as if they were good. A century and a half later, Hobbes asked how the potentially destructive consequences of the autonomous pursuit of individual gain might be constrained by the authority of a sovereign ruler.
Full PDF
참고2:
| A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton University Press, May 1, 2011. Cover Page Table of Contents Chapter 1: A Cooperative Species Chapter 12: Conclusion: Human Cooperation and Its Evolution | |
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| Understanding Capitalism: Competition, Command, and Change, Oxford University Press, 3rd revised edition, with Richard Edwards, Frank Roosevelt. (table of contents, sample figures from chapter 1) | |
    Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-Scale Societies, co-edited with Joe Henrich, Robert Boyd, Colin Camerer, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis. Oxford University Press, 2004. (table of contents) |  |
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Unequal Chances: Family Background and Economic Success, co-edited with Herbert Gintis and Melissa Osborne. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005. (table of contents)  Poverty Traps, co-edited with Steven Durlauf and Karla Hoff. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. (table of contents) | |
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Inequality, Cooperation, and Environmental Sustainability, co-edited with Jean-Marie Baland and Pranab Bardhan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. (table of contents)  Globalization and Egalitarian Redistribution, co-edited with Pranab Bardhan and Michael Wallerstein. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006. (table of contents) | |
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