Written by leading scholars from various disciplines, this book presents current research on topics such as public choice, game theory, and political economy. It features contributions on fundamental, methodological, and empirical issues around the concepts of power and responsibility that strive to bridge the gap between different disciplinary approaches. The contributions fall into roughly four sub-disciplines: voting and voting power, public economics and politics, economics and philosophy, as well as labor economics. On the occasion of his 75th birthday, this book is written in honor of Manfred J. Holler, an economist by training and profession whose work as a guiding light has helped advance our understanding of the interdisciplinary connections of concepts of power and responsibility. He has written many articles and books on game theory, and worked extensively on questions of labor economics, politics, and philosophy.

Human beings are social beings. They form societies and manage to combine their individual skills for the advantage of the whole group. However, given a specific society, individuals have an incentive to free-ride on the effort provided by others and not contribute to the collective interests. Even more so, without restrictions, each individual has an interest to take from others what is not his. Social Organization offers a collection of four papers dealing with different aspects of how societies may deal with the problem of free-riding. The papers constitute four parts. Broadly speaking, the first part is interpreted as showing the need for social institutions. In line with the scholars of classical economics, the remaining three parts offer an investigation of the design of three distinct forms of institutions, namely morality, social norms, and the law. The latter three papers take Adam Smiths moral and legal philosophy as starting point.