"Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools that have not wit enough to be honest," wrote Benjamin Franklin. This volume explores ways in which the honest establish trust and enjoy good fortune, even without policing. The central mechanism at work is "reputation. To work, information about the individual's conduct must be observed, interpreted, recorded, stored, and transmitted. Different forms of "seals of approval" develop to communicate the quality of an individual's reputation to others.

The studies in this volume reveal how vast information systems like Dun & Bradstreet and TRW generate reputation and beneficial exchange, and how brand names, middlemen, and dealers give their own sort of seal of approval. One chapter describes the origins of Underwriters' Laboratories, an organization that sells its inspection services and mark of approval for product safety. Another argues that J. P. Morgan's investment banking service was in large part applying astute judgment in granting the Morgan seal of approval to firms in need of capital. Other, less formal, reputational mechanisms such as gossip, customary law, and written correspondence are also explored. Contexts range from trust among merchants in Medieval Europe, social control in small communities, and good conduct in a vast anonymous society such as our own.

Throughout these broad-ranging studies, the central theme of the volume emerges: in an open, competitive environment, honesty can recruit cleverness to assert itself and to drive out the dishonest.

A review by the Cato Institute is available.

Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct

This article examines the economic institution utilized during the eleventh century to facilitate complex trade characterized by asymmetric information and limited legal contract enforceability. The geniza documents are employed to present the "coalition," an economic institution based upon a reputation mechanism utilized by Mediterranean traders to confront the organizational problem associated with the exchange relations between merchants and their overseas agents. The theoretical framework explains many trade-related phenomena, especially why traders utilized specific forms of business association, and indicates the interrelations between social and economic institutions.

There is a new book for sale, Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy : Lessons from Medieval Trade, from Cambridge University Press, which builds on the article linked here.

Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders

A central question in the social sciences and history is therefore why societies evolve along distinct trajectories of institutional development and why some societies fail to adopt the institutions of those that are more economically successful.

This book draws upon detailed historical studies to motivate, illustrate, and present a new perspective—comparative and historical institutional analysis—that goes a long way toward advancing institutional analysis in general and addressing this question.

Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade

We explore the dynamics of group inequality when segregation of social networks places the initially less affluent group at a disadvantage in acquiring human capital. Extending Loury (1977), we demonstrate that (i) group differences in economic success can persist across generations in the absence of either discrimination or group differences in ability, provided that social segregation is sufficiently great, (ii) there is a threshold level of integration above which group inequality cannot be sustained, (iii) this threshold varies systematically but non-monotonically with the population share of the disadvantaged group, (iv) crossing the threshold induces convergence to a common high level of human capital if the less affluent population share is sufficiently small (and the opposite, otherwise), and (v) a race-neutral policy that reduces the cost of acquiring human capital can expand the range over which reducing segregation can be Pareto-improving.

Social Segregation and the Dynamics of Group Inequality

Conceieved as a "New Athens," the Santa Fe Institute brings together a pantheon of brilliant minds to ask the big questions.

In this crowd, there is nothing unusual about such intellectual shape-shifting. There is nothing surprising about an economist versed in endocrinology. Or a chemist studying brain development. Or a theoretical physicist searching for the original mother tongue. This, after all, is the Santa Fe Institute, a private, nonprofit think tank world-renowned for its unique interdisciplinary approach. For more than 20 years, the center has brought together world-class researchers in physics, biology, economics, anthropology, linguistics, neuroscience, and other disciplines to storm the frontiers of knowledge. Even the arts and humanities are represented: novelist Cormac McCarthy and photographer Robert Buelteman are artists in residence, hobnobbing freely with the scientists.

the science of synergy

A popular book, movie, or song can generate millions of dollars. But the social process that creates a blockbuster makes it difficult to predict which ones will succeed.

Enter General Memetics Corporation! I had all of that figured out ten years ago ...

I remember covering this last month, but I don't think the Science article ever got linked.

Hit songs, books, and movies are many times more successful than average, suggesting that "the best" alternatives are qualitatively different from "the rest"; yet experts routinely fail to predict which products will succeed. We investigated this paradox experimentally, by creating an artificial "music market" in which 14,341 participants downloaded previously unknown songs either with or without knowledge of previous participants' choices. Increasing the strength of social influence increased both inequality and unpredictability of success. Success was also only partly determined by quality: The best songs rarely did poorly, and the worst rarely did well, but any other result was possible.

Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market -- Salganik et al. 311 (5762): 854 -- Science

This may be of interest to readers of Jared Diamond's "Collapse".

Archaeologists cheered when Waldo Wilcox's vast spread was deeded to the state of Utah, believing that it holds keys to a tribe that flourished 1,000 years ago - and then mysteriously vanished.

Secrets of the Range Creek Ranch

Though much has been written about the Civil War itself, little has been written about the spy war that went on within.

Each side still used age-old intelligence techniques, such as code-breaking, deception, and covert surveillance. However, into this modern war came two innovations that would endure as tools of espionage: wiretapping and overhead reconnaissance.

What follows is a look at some of the highlights of how the North and the South gathered and used their information, the important missions, and the personalities. From this special view, the focus is not on the battlefield, but on a battle of wits.

Intelligence in the Civil War

Unwriting a book is one thing. Unreading it is something else.

The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival starts on Friday, March 24. Previewing events at the festival, Richard Dawkins looks back at the extraordinary 30-year history of his first book, The Selfish Gene.

A reader from Australia writes:

I largely blame The Selfish Gene for a series of bouts of depression I suffered from for more than a decade.

For our readers within driving distance of Oxford:

Richard Dawkins will discuss The Selfish Gene and its impact at the Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival on Wednesday, March 29 at 2.30pm

It's all in the genes

Modern urban terrorism began in Algiers, and one result of that development was France's creation of a monstrous, chaotic, military apparatus of torture to use any means necessary to dismantle the terrorist cells. Did torture succeed in Algiers because the paras were dealing with a small population in a cordoned-off area?

One wonders.

Morgan doesn't offer any real answers, but he does eventually reckon with his own act of torture -- and the ripple effects on a culture and a military that practice torture. "The Algerian experience did not enrich me," he writes. "It diminished me." This memoir is a prose map of the ruin of war, a love song for a ruined city and a damaged people, and an anthem to youth, sex and vigor.

War enriches no one. But Morgan's fine book will.

The Front Lines of Fear