Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State

Assar Lindbeck, Sten Nyberg and Jörgen Weibull

The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1999, vol. 114, issue 1, 1-35

Abstract: This paper analyzes the interplay between social norms and economic incentives in the context of work decisions in the modem welfare state. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population share adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is felt by the individual. Individuals face two choices: one economic, whether to work or live off public transfers; and one political, how large the transfer should be. The size of the transfer and the intensity of the social norm are determined endogenously in equilibrium.

Date: 1999
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (475)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1162/003355399555936 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State (1997)
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:oup:qjecon:v:114:y:1999:i:1:p:1-35.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Quarterly Journal of Economics is currently edited by Robert J. Barro, Lawrence F. Katz, Nathan Nunn, Andrei Shleifer and Stefanie Stantcheva

More articles in The Quarterly Journal of Economics from President and Fellows of Harvard College
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().