Book Review Excerpts Praising Reputation

Cato Journal (Spring/Summer 1997): [T]he book contains several articles that are already classics in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field of human cooperation . . . The book will be welcomed by economists, sociologists, historians, and others seeking to understand what makes people work together to pursue mutually beneficial interests. Besides its value to specialists, it could serve as a supplement for an advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate course on the economics of cooperation. -- Richard E. Messick, Instituto Libertad y Democracia

The Freeman (March 1998): Fascinating, stimulating, and highly enlightening, Reputation is a most valuable contribution to our understanding of free markets and how they work. More than that, it is a powerful and timely weapon in the struggle against statism, going far to disprove the canard that people cannot be trusted with freedom. -- John Attarian

Civnet (August-Sept. 1997): . . . a series of elegant and fascinating studies of the functioning institutions of civil society -- the ones that work so well that we don't normally notice them. . . . Serious discussion of civil society cannot proceed without the kind of rigorous attention to the actual institutions and practices that make trust among strangers possible. There is no better place to start than Reputation . . . Trust me. -- Tom G. Palmer, Cato Institute

World (June 28, 1997): . . . shows how free markets can handle many of the problems that today we routinely hand over to government. . . . It suggests that radical deregulation would both protect the public and save money. -- Doug Bandow

Consumers' Research (July 1998): . . . underscores the superior ability of the marketplace over governmental efforts to root out the rascally "untrustworthy promisor." As Klein explains: "A vote for coercive government measures must rest on the belief that this rascal cannot be adequately foiled by the open-ended, voluntary processes generated by resourceful middlemen, qualified knowers, trustworthy promisors, and wary consumers who purposively seek pointed knowledge." -- Peter Spencer, Consumers' Research

 

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