Reciprocity is a pervasive type of social interaction in encounters, groups and organizations. This volume gathers basic recent works in its main domains such as the theory of reciprocity, the public economics of transfers, the economics of the family, charities, gifts of organs, or the motivations for gift-giving. The book constitutes a landmark in this rapidly expanding field of research.

The Handbook on the Economics of Giving, Reciprocity and Altruism provides a comprehensive set of reviews of literature on the economics of nonmarket voluntary transfers. The foundations of the field are reviewed first, with a sequence of chapters that present the hard core of the theoretical and empirical analyses of giving, reciprocity and altruism in economics, examining their relations with the viewpoints of moral philosophy, psychology, sociobiology, sociology and economic anthropology. Secondly, a comprehensive set of applications are considered of all the aspects of society...

Reciprocity is the basis of social relations. It permits a peaceful and free society in which people and rights are respected. The essence of families and communities, it also enables the working of markets and organizations, while correcting their main failures. Reciprocity is also a basis of politics, and it justifies social policies. Although the importance of reciprocity has been widely recognized in other social sciences, it has, until recently, been somewhat ignored in economic analysis. Over the past three decades, economic theorist and moral philosopher Serge-Christophe Kolm has been...

The main features of the just society, as they would be chosen by the unanimous, impartial, and fully informed judgment of its members, present a remarkable and simple meaningful structure. In this society, individuals' freedom is full respected, and redistribution amounts to an equal sharing of individuals' different earnings obtained by the same limited "equalization labour." This also amounts to general balanced reciprocity, where each individual yields to each other the proceeds of the same labour. The concept of equalization labour is a measure of the degree of community, solidarity,...