Climate change pressures businesses to adapt, but knowledge on adaptation strategies remains fragmented. This systematic literature review addresses this gap by advancing the adaptation field in three ways. First, it expands the conceptualization of business adaptation strategies through a novel classification based on depth, time, locus, and tactic. Second, it identifies five key determinants influencing adaptation decisions: regulatory and stakeholder pressures, industry specificities, business network features, organizational capabilities, and individual characteristics. Finally, the review proposes a comprehensive framework with three tiers: 1) determinants at various levels, 2) types of adaptation strategies, and 3) adaptation impacts. This framework offers novel research avenues for scholarship and enables a more nuanced assessment of the impact of adaptation strategies. Additionally, a 'reverse roadmap' is proposed to help practitioners and policymakers navigate from desired adaptation outcomes back to current choices, increasing resilience while limiting maladaptation risks.

The phenomenon of household products disappearing from supermarket shelves after the COVID-19 outbreak has garnered strong attention in the media. After a negative shock, household products can be viewed as a common-pool resource subject to a rule of capture by the first appropriators. Using a sample of US participants surveyed in the aftermath of the pandemic declaration, we show that participants often coordinate on an egalitarian allocation of masks when informed that a fixed supply of facial masks exists. In another study, we manipulated group composition to include an older adult, drawing attention to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on older individuals. In this study, participants 24 or younger demand significantly fewer masks than those 65 or older, without any detectable increase in misco ordination. The results of two unannounced iterations of the same game demonstrate that the victim effect attenuates over time, and the two age groups converge toward the egalitarian allocation of masks. We also report that an incentivized group of external observers deems a prudentially low demand for masks appropriate in this environment. We conclude that providing information about vulnerabilities in the population

The excellence and integrity of Rationality and Society depends on the dedication and expertise of volunteer reviewers who evaluate submissions for their contribution to the discipline, soundness of research, writing clarity, and general interest. With apologies to any inadvertently omitted reviewers, the editors of Rationality and Society extend sincere thanks to the following reviewers for providing highly valuable comments on papers submitted in 2020 and 2021:

The Affect–Integration–Motivation (AIM) framework was proposed to clarify how brain circuits that support decision-making are altered by aging (Samanez-Larkin & Knutson, 2015). According to this framework, choices are preceded by affective, integrative, and motivational processes, which may all be affected by aging. The Monetary Incentive Delay (MID) task allows tapping into several mechanisms proposed by the AIM framework, and the present registered report aimed to explore the temporal resolution of the EEG to find the neural correlates of age differences in such mechanisms, including gain/loss anticipation, value integration, motivational processes underlying motor choice, as well as processing of positive/negative rewards. The electrophysiological data were recorded from 77 participants (20–80 years old), and we analyzed the Cue-P3, Contingent Negative Variation, target-P3, Feedback-related Negativity, and the Feedback-P3. The results support the AIM framework, suggesting that aging altered affective processes (as shown by a significant reduced cue-P3 in the older group), while preserved integration and motivation processes. However, despite a general lack of significant group by domain interactions across the ERPs analyzed, the results of the planned comparisons are suggestive of a preserved processing of gains and affected processing of losses during aging. This conclusion requires further replication with larger samples, but our study shows that future research may profit from decomposing decision processes to understand how biological aging affects decision making.

Ethnographers have recorded many instances of tokens donated as gifts to attract new partners or strengthen ties to existing ones. We study whether gifts are an effective pledge of the donor’s trustworthiness through an experiment modeled on the trust game. We vary whether the trustee can send a token before the trustor decides whether to transfer money; whether one of the tokens is rendered salient through experimental manipulations (a vote or an incentive-compatible rule of purchase for the tokens); and whether the subjects interact repeatedly or are randomly re-matched in each round. Tokens are frequently sent in all studies in which tokens are available, but repeated interaction, rather than gifts, is the leading behavioral driver in our data. In the studies with random pairs, trustors send significantly more points when the trustee has sent a token. Subjects in a fixed matching achieve comparable levels of trust and trustworthiness in the studies with and without tokens. The trustee’s decision to send a token is not predictive of the amount the trustee returns to the trustor. A token is used more sparingly whenever salient — a novel instance of endogenous value creation in the lab.

Previous literature has studied waste picking as an economic, social, and environmental phenomenon of great importance in the Global South. The legal foundations of waste picking have, however, received little scholarly attention. Surveys conducted by the global network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing show that laws about access to waste are a central concern for many waste pickers. We study the efficiency of different property regimes for waste in the Global South. The candidate regimes are exclusionary ownership of waste by one category (private companies or the waste pickers), public ownership by the state, common or communal ownership, and res nullius ("first in time, first in right"). Any property regime that tries to exclude the waste pickers from accessing waste is associated with high transaction costs. We argue that the res nullius regime, complemented by waste pickers' organizations, regulates the waste sector efficiently in the Global South.

The anthropological literature provides many instances of tokens donated in the form of a gift to woo potential trade partners, or to strengthen ties to existing partners. We study the role of gifts, as pledges of one’s trustworthiness, through an experiment modeled on the trust game. We vary whether the trustee can send a token before the trustor decides whether to transfer money; whether one of the tokens is socially positioned; and whether the participants interact repeatedly or are randomly re-matched in each round. Participants in a fixed matching achieve comparable levels of trust and trustworthiness in the studies with and without tokens. In the studies with a token, trustors send significantly more points when the trustee has sent a token. A token is used more sparingly after it is socially positioned. We conclude that for institutional design, the time horizon of the relationship might be at least as important as the ability to make pledges.

Field studies of networks have uncovered a preference to befriend people we perceive as similar according to some dimensions of our identity (“homophily”). Lab studies of network formation games have found that adherence to social norms of reciprocity and inequity aversion are also drivers of network choices. No study so far has attempted to investigate the role of both homophily and social norms in a controlled environment. At the beginning of our experiment, each player fills in a personal profile. Each player then views the profile of all other players and expresses a degree of perceived similarity between his/her profile and the profile of the other player. At this point, a repeated network formation game ensues. We find that: (1) potential homophily considerations triggered by the profile rating task did not measurably change the players’ behavior compared to the baseline; (2) reciprocity plays a significant role in the formulation of the players’ strategies, in particular lowering the probability that the player naively best responds to the network observed in the previous period. We speculate that reciprocation of past choices might be a more “available” aid in strategy-formulation than considerations related to the similarity of the other players.

We ask whether the corporate law provisions establishing that the conduct of the manager is subject to review by the investors (monitoring) and that managers are held to an honorable behavior (moral suasion) can increase trust and trustworthiness in organizations. We answer this question through a laboratory experiment. We find that moral suasion increases the investors' trust. Monitoring also increases trust but only when the manager is not aware of the experimental identity of the monitor. The manager returns more to those investors who trust more but appropriates around 50% of the available resources. The trustworthiness of the manager is, however, unaffected by monitoring or moral suasion. We discuss possible causes of the difference between the investors' expectations regarding the behavior of the manager and the observed behavior of the manager.

Many anthropological records exist of seemingly worthless tokens exchanged in traditional societies. The most famous instances of such tokens are probably the Kula necklaces and armbands first described by B. Malinowski. In our experiment, each participant can send a token to another participant before each round of a repeated public good game. We use as examples of tokens a bracelet built by the participants in the lab, a simple piece of cardboard provided by the experimenter, and an object brought from home by the participants. Notwithstanding the cheap-talk nature of the decision to send the token, both sending and receiving the token are associated with a significant increase in contributions to the public good. Regression analysis shows that contributions to the public good in the treatments featuring a bracelet and a cardboard piece are higher than in a control study. The home object appears not to have been equally useful in increasing contributions.

Previous literature has tried to establish whether and how steroid hormones are related to economic risk-taking. In this study, we investigate the relationship between testosterone (T) and cortisol (C) on one side and attitudes toward risk and ambiguity on the other. We asked 78 male undergraduate students to complete several tasks and provide two saliva samples. In the task “Reveal the Bag,” participants expressed their beliefs on an ambiguous situation in an incentivized framework. In the task “Ellsberg Bags,” we elicited from the participants through an incentive-compatible mechanism the reservation prices for a risky bet and an ambiguous bet. We used the difference between the two prices to calculate each participant's ambiguity premium. We found that participants' salivary T and C levels jointly predicted the ambiguity premium. Participants featuring comparatively lower levels of T and C showed the highest levels of ambiguity aversion. The beliefs expressed by a subset of participants in the “Reveal the Bag” task rationalize (in a revealed preference sense) their choices in the “Ellsberg Bags” task.

Previous literature has studied waste picking as an economic, social and environmental phenomenon of great importance in countries characterized by ineffective waste collection and recycling programs. The legal foundations of waste picking have, however, received little scholarly attention. Surveys conducted with waste pickers from 5 cities (Bogotá, Pune, Belo Horizonte, Durban, Nakuru) find that existing, and often hostile, regulations and competition from new entrants are key concerns for the waste pickers. In this paper, I argue that any system of legal rules that tries to exclude the waste pickers from the waste value chain results in high transaction costs and risks further aggravating existing social injustices. Several inclusive property right regimes are conceivable, from waste picker ownership of waste to a res nullius (nobody’s property) regime complemented by a right of first possession. Res nullius creates incentives for the stakeholders of waste to specialize in different segments of the collection and recycling chain. Possible drawbacks of this regime are dissipating rents because of open access to waste.

Se lleva a cabo un planteamiento del estatus de la naturaleza en el ordenamiento juridico como sujeto y objeto de derechos. Para lograr este objetivo, los autores se valen de una metodologia inductiva a partir de un analisis descriptivo desde la doctrina, jurisprudencia y normas primarias. Con ello, se busca, en primer lugar, responder a la cuestion de si es posible o no que un ordenamiento juridico contemple derechos de la naturaleza; en segundo lugar, se pretende evidenciar como el reconocimiento de derechos sobre la naturaleza por parte de la jurisprudencia en Colombia cuenta con presupuestos comunes pese a que aun no se contemplan reglas claras sobre la asignacion de derechos a la naturaleza. Al final, se realiza un llamado de atencion para comprender esta figura mas como un instrumento que el Estado debe utilizar a favor de la naturaleza, que como un decalogo de derechos.

This paper asks whether it is possible to derive a concern for future generations (“sustainability”) from an account of the firm as a social contract (SC) among its stakeholders. Two aspects of a leading SC model of the firm limit its usefulness for an analysis of sustainability. First, the stakeholders provide investments to the firm over time. Second, the relationship between contemporaries and future generations is marked by asymmetries of power and knowledge that need to be considered while reconstructing the SC today. I discuss three reformulations of the SC that are all, in principle, capable of introducing within the SC a concern for future generations. The first describes the contractors as heads of families. The second envisages a grand meeting of stakeholders of all generations. The third, which I find most defensible, views the SC as an ahistorical agreement reached behind a thick veil of ignorance. This agreement is based on John Rawls’s norm of reciprocity, whereby the stakeholders adopt today the decision they wish all previous (and future) generations had made regarding the rate of consumption of natural resources and emission of pollutants.

Abstract Waste picking is an informal economy activity that has attracted a large amount of research across the social sciences. We contribute to the debate on informality and its institutional determinants through case study analysis. We present a unique partnership between waste pickers and firms operating in Colombia called Proyecto Pensilvania. We argue that two specific sets of laws made this partnership possible. The first grants legal recognition to the activity pursued by the waste pickers, who become “waste entrepreneurs.” This is a key initial step to bring informal sector workers into the realm of the formal economy. The second grants special legal protection to the associations of waste pickers when they compete for inclusion in the local waste management plans. This is a way to incentivize waste pickers to join associations. Proyecto Pensilvania decreases transaction costs, generates income for disenfranchised groups of individuals and limits environmental degradation. The regulatory reforms that led to its establishment can be imitated by other countries with sizable waste picker populations.

In this paper we discuss two instruments through which corporate law attempts to promote trust and trustworthiness in business organizations: (i) monitoring of the manager by a principal, as in the agency approach; (ii) moral suasion, as in the approach according to which managers are i?½fiduciariesi?½. We present the results of a laboratory experiment designed to investigate the effectiveness of these two instruments in promoting: (i) profitable, but at the same time risky, entrustments of assets to a manager from a group of investors earning their endowment through real effort; (ii) a higher payback for those investors who entrust more assets to the manager. The first is a measure of trust of the investors in the manager, while the second is a measure of the manageri?½s trustworthiness. We find that moral suasion increases the investorsi?½ trust. Monitoring also increases the investorsi?½ trust, but only in the case in which the manager is not aware of the experimental identity of his/her principal. The manager is trustworthy up to a certain degree, regardless of the governance structure of the organization and of the accuracy with which she observes each investori?½s entrustment. Finally, we find a modest positive effect of noise on trust, but no strong effect of noise on effort or trustworthiness.

In this paper we study how norms of symmetry and centricity affect the functioning of two ways to allocate resources described in the economic anthropology literature, namely reciprocity and redistribution. The baseline reciprocity study, with no explicit priming of the norm of symmetry, features near-zero levels of allocative efficiency. Consistent with the anthropological framework we use throughout, we find that priming the norm of symmetry among the players through pre-play communication dramatically increases efficiency. Next we study a game of redistribution and find that in the final stages of the game allocative efficiency levels consistently approach 100%, regardless of how the chief comes to acquire centricity in the group. We conclude that reciprocity and redistribution can seldom allocate resources efficiently in the absence of norms of symmetry and centricity in the institutional design. By way of comparison, we confirm a robust finding in the experimental economics literature that a simple market exchange game achieves high efficiency, even when the traders can formulate expectations about each other's compliance with norms.

Inspired by Karl Polanyii?½s writings on three allocation modes, namely reciprocity, exchange and redistribution, we first tested a reciprocity ring with ten players. The baseline treatment, with no possibility of socialisation, displayed very low levels of allocative efficiency. Consistently with the Polanyian approach to reciprocity, we found that inducing the notion of symmetry among the players increased efficiency levels significantly. We then simulated a market exchange, with significant allocative efficiency gains. We conclude that indirect-reciprocity rings among anonymous players can seldom function in the absence of definite institutional refinements, promoting forms of symmetry-acknowledgement.

ABSTRACT This essay tries to delineate, via the concept of enlarged fiduciary proviso, the contribution of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to the implementation,of the EU SustainabilityStrategy. The most evident concernof the EU institutions is to promote a gradual use of the natural resources forming the environment, interpretedhere as proxy for the welfare of future generations of stakeholders. Sustainability is here framed within Corporate Responsibility,