Walt Byars wrote:
An odd criticism. In the mid 1970's Gintis wrote some well known papers on the implications of "endogenous preferences" i.e. preferences which are not given but caused by the economic system. He always mentions how his more recent work is an extension of this. Bowles's Microeconomics has lots of game theoretical models which have to do with preference formation. I thought those models were a little awkward but potentially useful.
I'm no expert on Gintis. To be honest, three years ago, I didn't even know the guy existed. But working on my inequality/growth model, I bumped onto his name a few times and browsed a couple of his papers to make sure I wasn't replicating his (or somebody else's) work. That's how I got to take a look at his "Wealth Inequality, Constraints, and Performance" (with Bardhan and Bowles) and his "Evolution of Strong Reciprocity" (with Bowles). Both papers (and this is something I can say very comfortably) are serious attempts to explain *institutions* and *preferences*. Everybody can see this with their own eyes. Just go to Gintis' web site, download, and study the papers. As they stand, these papers are a basic critique of the tenets of the economic ideology we all despise. So, just based on those two papers by one author (Gintis), which are relatively recent work, I can say that Jim's very general remarks are entirely off base.
