IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ctc/serie5/ispe0072.html

Identity and Incentives an Economic Interpretation of the Holocaust

Author

Listed:
  • Raul Caruso

    (DISCE, Università Cattolica)

Abstract

This paper proposes an interpretation of the Holocaust along the lines of economic theory and public choice. The Holocaust had been the most inhumane and brutal genocide in the twentieth century, and also a gigantic predatory enterprise shaped and engineered by a complex institutional machinery. The paper proposes a general interpretation based on the inclusion of identity-associated elements in the utility functions of Nazis. Under the Nazi regime, the production and strengthening of Nazi identity was a matter of political economy. In addition, interpretations of Aryanization (appropriation of Jewish property) and the running of extermination camps are provided.

Suggested Citation

  • Raul Caruso, 2015. "Identity and Incentives an Economic Interpretation of the Holocaust," DISCE - Working Papers del Dipartimento di Politica Economica ispe0072, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Dipartimenti e Istituti di Scienze Economiche (DISCE).
    • Handle: RePEc:ctc:serie5:ispe0072
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://istituti.unicatt.it/politica-economica-ISPE0072.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2015
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Franklin Mixon & W. Charles Sawyer & Len Treviño, 2004. "Vertical and Horizontal Trust Networks in Bureaucracies: Evidence from the Third Reich," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 371-381, November.
    2. Raul Caruso, 2012. "Differentials in property Rights in a two-sector economy," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 122(2), pages 257-278.
    3. Caruso Raul, 2011. "On the Nature of Peace Economics," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 16(2), pages 1-13, January.
    4. Charles Anderton, 2014. "A research agenda for the economic study of genocide: signposts from the field of conflict economics," Working Papers 1413, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    5. Buchheim, Christoph & Scherner, Jonas, 2006. "The Role of Private Property in the Nazi Economy: The Case of Industry," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(2), pages 390-416, June.
    6. John R. Hamman & George Loewenstein & Roberto A. Weber, 2010. "Self-Interest through Delegation: An Additional Rationale for the Principal-Agent Relationship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1826-1846, September.
    7. Franklin G. Mixon & Ernest W. King, 2009. "Coercion, vertical trust and entrepreneurism in bureaucracies: evidence from the Nazi Holocaust," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 29(2), pages 673-679.
    8. Banken, Ralf, 2006. "National Socialist Plundering of Precious Metals, 1933-1945: The Role of Degussa," Institute of European Studies, Working Paper Series qt5615g5pm, Institute of European Studies, UC Berkeley.
    9. Garfinkel, Michelle R. & Skaperdas, Stergios, 2007. "Economics of Conflict: An Overview," Handbook of Defense Economics, in: Keith Hartley & Todd Sandler (ed.), Handbook of Defense Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 22, pages 649-709, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bo Chen & Chatterji Manas, 2014. "Advances in Peace Economics and Peace Science: Introduction," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(3), pages 373-376, August.
    2. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2012. "Avant-Propos," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 122(2), pages 135-151.
    3. Economou Emmanouil M.L. & Kyriazis Nicholas C., 2016. "Choosing Peace Instead of War. A Lesson from Athenian Democracy," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 22(2), pages 191-212, April.
    4. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2012. "Political Economy of Conflict Foreword," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 122(2), pages 153-169.
    5. Raul Caruso, 2015. "Beyond deterrence and decline. Towards a general understanding of peace economics," Rivista Internazionale di Scienze Sociali, Vita e Pensiero, Pubblicazioni dell'Universita' Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, vol. 123(1), pages 57-74.
    6. Gary Bolton & Eugen Dimant & Ulrich Schmidt, 2018. "When a Nudge Backfires. Using Observation with Social and Economic Incentives to Promote Pro-Social Behavior," PPE Working Papers 0017, Philosophy, Politics and Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
    7. James Bland & Nikos Nikiforakis, 2013. "Tacit Coordination in Games with Third-Party Externalities," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics 2013_19, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Economics.
    8. Chang, Yang-Ming & Sanders, Shane & Walia, Bhavneet, 2015. "The costs of conflict: A choice-theoretic, equilibrium analysis," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 62-65.
    9. Adamson, Jordan, 2020. "Political institutions, resources, and war: Theory and evidence from ancient Rome," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    10. Jiabin Wu, 2018. "Indirect higher order beliefs and cooperation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(4), pages 858-876, December.
    11. Marie Claire Villeval, 2019. "Comportements (non) éthiques et stratégies morales," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 70(6), pages 1021-1046.
    12. Francisco Rodríguez & Patrick Imam, 2025. "Political growth collapses," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 205(1), pages 183-217, October.
    13. Klaus Abbink & Jordi Brandts, 2016. "Political autonomy and independence: Theory and experimental evidence," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 28(3), pages 461-496, July.
    14. Fatema, Naureen, 2019. "Can land title reduce low-intensity interhousehold conflict incidences and associated damages in eastern DRC?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-1.
    15. Blouin, Max & Pallage, Stéphane, 2016. "Warlords, famine and food aid: Who fights, who starves?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 18-38.
    16. Lucas C. Coffman & Alexander Gotthard-Real, 2019. "Moral Perceptions of Advised Actions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(8), pages 3904-3927, August.
    17. Ernst Fehr & Holger Herz & Tom Wilkening, 2013. "The Lure of Authority: Motivation and Incentive Effects of Power," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(4), pages 1325-1359, June.
    18. Vetter, Stefan, 2013. "Delegating decision rights for anticipated rewards as an alternative to corruption: An experiment," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 188-204.
    19. Gary Charness & Ramón Cobo-Reyes & Juan A. Lacomba & Francisco Lagos & Jose Maria Perez, 2016. "Social comparisons in wage delegation: experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(2), pages 433-459, June.
    20. Liang, Pinghan & Meng, Juanjuan, 2016. "Favor transmission and social image concern: An experimental study," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 14-21.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D74 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
    • H56 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - National Security and War
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • H13 - Public Economics - - Structure and Scope of Government - - - Economics of Eminent Domain; Expropriation; Nationalization

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ctc:serie5:ispe0072. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Fabio Montobbio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dscatit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.