何以立德:对“嫌贫爱富”现象的经济解释

Explaining the Moral Collapse:A Perspective of Social Network

中国当前面临着严重的道德滑坡问题,其中一个重要表现就是"嫌贫爱富"愈演愈烈。本文从经济学的视角来审视这一道德问题,通过"机会"和"资本"两个概念探讨"嫌贫爱富"现象背后的动机和解决策略。人们为了把握未来的机会,需要在当前尽力提高自己动用资本的能力。经验证据表明,资本实力最大化确实是人们构建社会关系的重要动机。以此为出发点,本文构建了一个基于资本实力最大化动机的社会网络模型。模型表明,面临预算约束的利益主体必然采取"嫌贫爱富"的行为模式。"嫌贫爱富"是一个纳什均衡,意味着道德上的批判无助于改变这一行为方式。发展金融体系,利用商业网络替代私人关系网络可以减轻人们对私人关系的依赖,并在一定程度上解决"嫌贫爱富"这一道德问题。

The problem of moral collapse has become increasingly serious in China, which has attracted wide attention over the whole society. This paper explores the reason of moral collapse from a perspective of economics. We build a social network model, which discusses the strategies based on the motivation of maximizing capital ability. Our model reveals that the strategy of being close to the rich and far away from the poor is a unique Nash equilibrium. It implies that criticizing moral collapse is not efficient to change the behavior. The empirical analysis shows that capital ability maximization is an important motivation in social network formation. The implication of the study is that we need to develop financial sector and alleviate people＇ s reliance on interpersonal network so as to solve the problem of moral collapse.