Morality and Conflicts

Dorothee Schmidt ()
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Dorothee Schmidt: Department of Economics, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany

No 2005_12, Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods from Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Abstract: In recent debates, morality or social norms have been proposed as an instrument to reduce conflict behavior. As the argument goes, moral people will not engage in socially not-tolerated behavior or, less so than amoral people. Analyzing this question in the framework of contest theory, we find that if morality can discriminate between appropriation and defense, it is an effective instrument to lower socially unwanted behavior and support the enforcement of property rights. If it cannot discriminate between these different conflict efforts, strategic effects due to a one-sided increase in morality might actually lead to total increased conflict effort in the economy.

Keywords: Contests; property right enforcement; morality; education (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D74 I20 K42 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2005-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo, nep-law and nep-soc
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mpg:wpaper:2005_12

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