Performative Mechanisms

Forthcoming: Ivan Boldyrev, Ekaterina Svetlova, eds., Enacting Dismal Science: New Perspectives on the Performativity of Economics, Palgrave McMillan

43 Pages Posted: 28 Oct 2015

See all articles by Carsten Herrmann-Pillath

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath

Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies

Date Written: October 25, 2015

Abstract

Performativity is grounded in a particular kind of social mechanisms that involve semiotic causation. I combine three different literatures, on performativity, on constitutive explanations in the social sciences, and on Peircian semiotics into a conceptual and methodological framework that can deal with the ubiquitous phenomena of contextualization and framing in experimental and behavioural economics. In the semiotic model, incentives always operate via two channels of causation, the efficient-causal one and the semiotic one, with the latter operating via the cognitive system. For example, in social preferences incentives efficient-causally impact on neuronal mechanisms that generate actions and on the cognitive processing of in-group/outgroup boundaries. I present the example of corporate governance and managerial incentive systems as a case in point, arguing that these are performative mechanisms, as reflected in observations of historical and cultural embeddedness. This results in the impossibility of formulating universal regularities along the lines of the ‘legal origin’ literature.

Keywords: constitutive explanations; performativity; framing; incentive systems; corporate governance

JEL Classification: B41, B50, C90, D03

Suggested Citation

Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten, Performative Mechanisms (October 25, 2015). Forthcoming: Ivan Boldyrev, Ekaterina Svetlova, eds., Enacting Dismal Science: New Perspectives on the Performativity of Economics, Palgrave McMillan, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2679435

Carsten Herrmann-Pillath (Contact Author)

Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies ( email )

Nordhäuserstr. 74
Erfurt, 90228
Germany

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