Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert

I completed my Doctoral studies in the Faculty of Economics and Politics at the University of Cambridge. My thesis, which was supervised by Professor Bob Rowthorn is entitled "Trust, Morality and the Social Order." In this investigation I developed a conceptual account and an ad hoc formal framework in which problems of trust can be analysed as a specific form of social exchange. Within this formal framework, the sort of devices that might improve social outcomes in such settings where explored. After I completed my Ph.D. in September 2003, I accepted a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the Catholic University of Chile. Next semester I will be teaching a course in game theory for social scientists.

My current research focus is the interplay between material sanctions and rule-guided behaviour in human populations. This is not the standard relationship widely studied in neoclassical economics in which the agent incorporates the material effect of the sanction in his or her maximisation process, but the effect of the implementation of these sanctions on the agents’ moral dispositions themselves. In terms of this interplay two opposite effects have been reported: a) an internalisation effect by which the agent assimilates the norm; and b) a crowding-out effect where the implementation of the incentives weaken the agents’ moral dispositions. In this context, I would like to understand what sort of social dynamics might explain these alternative processes and under which conditions each effect will prevail.