"Relazionalità e scienza economica. Una applicazione"

Abstract: Using game theory, and in particular “trust games”, it is possible, with a vision of reciprocity rooted in the “trinitarian paradigm”, to unpack gratuitousness as it characterizes reflection upon the category of gift in contemporary thought. In this way it is possible to come to a description of the dynamics of a “unconditional reciprocity”, in which the choice of giving is not conditioned by the expectation that the other will give back, but the result is inevitably conditioned by the response. This relational dimension differentiates between gift-reciprocity and pure altruism or philanthropy, and makes it always, at least potentially, wounding. The trinitarian paradigm seems, from this point of view, to be able to offer new frames for describing and understanding contemporary human behaviours, and in this way contributes to the creation of a new formal language, one that goes beyond the individualistic paradigm which characterizes game theory itself.