Social Reciprocity

Jeffrey Carpenter and Peter Matthews

No 1347, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We define social reciprocity as the act of demonstrating one's disapproval, at some personal cost, for the violation of widely-held norms (e.g., don't free ride). Social reciprocity differs from standard notions of reciprocity because social reciprocators intervene whenever a norm is violated and do not condition intervention on potential future payoffs, revenge, or altruism. Instead, we posit that social reciprocity is a triggered normative response. Our experiment confirms the existence of social reciprocity and demonstrates that more socially efficient outcomes arise when reciprocity can be expressed socially. To provide theoretical foundations for social reciprocity, we show that generalized punishment norms survive in one of the two stable equilibria of an evolutionary game with selection drift.

Keywords: reciprocity; norm; experiment; public good; learning; evolution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2004-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Social Reciprocity (2004)
Working Paper: Social Reciprocity (2002)
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