Caste and Punishment: The Legacy of Caste Culture in Norm Enforcement

Karla Hoff (), Mayuresh Kshetramade () and Ernst Fehr ()
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Karla Hoff: World Bank
Mayuresh Kshetramade: affiliation not available

No 4343, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)

Abstract: Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. Here we study how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy – the caste system – affects individuals' willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although we control for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one's own community. The lower willingness to punish may inhibit the low caste's ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability.

Keywords: social norms; informal sanctions; third party punishment; endogenous social preferences; social exclusion; collective action; caste (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D02 D64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-cwa, nep-evo, nep-exp and nep-soc
Date: 2009-08
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Working Paper: Caste and punishment: the legacy of caste culture in norm enforcement (2009)
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