Norm enforcement in social dilemmas: An experiment with police commissioners

David Dickinson, David Masclet () and Marie Claire Villeval

Journal of Public Economics, 2015, vol. 126, issue C, 74-85

Abstract: Do individuals trained in law enforcement punish or reward differently from typical student-subjects? We analyze norm enforcement behavior of newly appointed police commissioners in both a game with positive externalities (based on a Voluntary Contribution Mechanism) and a similar game with negative externalities. Depending on the treatment, a reward or sanction institution is either exogenously or endogenously implemented. Police commissioners cooperate significantly more in both games and bear a higher burden of the sanction costs compared to non-police subjects. When the norm enforcement institution is endogenous, subjects favor rewards over sanctions, but police subjects are more likely to vote for sanctions. Police subjects also reward and sanction more than the others when the institution results from a majority vote. Our experiment suggests that lab evidence on social dilemma games with positive or negative externalities and enforcement institutions is rather robust.

Keywords: Norm enforcement; Sanctions; Rewards; Voluntary contribution mechanism; Police; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D63 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272715000559
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Norm Enforcement in Social Dilemmas An Experiment with Police Commissioners (2015)
Working Paper: Norm Enforcement in Social Dilemmas: An Experiment with Police Commissioners (2014)
Working Paper: Norm Enforcement in Social Dilemmas. An Experiment with Police Commissioners (2014)
Working Paper: Norm Enforcement in Social Dilemmas. An Experiment with Police Commissioners (2014)
Working Paper: Norm Enforcement in Social Dilemmas: An Experiment with Police Commissioners (2014)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:126:y:2015:i:c:p:74-85

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2015.03.012

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba

More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().