Lee Cronk and Beth L. Leech, Meeting at Grand Central: Understanding the social and evolutionary roots of cooperation

摘要

The point of departure for economic theory resides in recognition that economic activities entail coherence among people even though that coherence is not a product of some person's plan. That coherence is nothing like that of a parade and resembles instead that which people experience while passing through a busy piazza. This book, written by an anthropologist (Cronk) and a political scientist (Leech), probes the social and evolutionary roots of cooperation, and locates that cooperation in a conjunction of biological imperatives and emergent institutional patterns. Readers of this Review will find much useful insight, for the book is redolent with Austrian themes. The book's title acknowledges a point Thomas Schelling once made about how focal points can serve to coordinate activities, and with those points often described as "Schelling Points." You have agreed to meet someone in New York at noon on a particular day, but forgot where you agreed to meet. Schelling's argument was that one or a few places would stand out as focal points. Schelling's particular illustration was Grand Central Station, as this was where trains from the north would arrive. Alternatively, one of the book's chapters is titled "Meeting at Perm Station," to illustrate the point that for someone traveling from the south Perm Station might serve as a focal point.