Why Punish: Social Reciprocity and the Enforcement of Prosocial Norms

Jeffrey Carpenter, Peter Matthews and Okomboli Ong'ong'a

Middlebury College Working Paper Series from Middlebury College, Department of Economics

Abstract: Recently economists have become interested in why people who face social dilemmas in the experimental lab use the seemingly incredible threat of punishment to deter free riding. Three theories with evolvutionary microfoundations have been developed to explain punishment. We survey these theories and use behavioral data from surveys and experiments to show that the theory called social reciprocity in which people punish norm violators indiscriminately explains punishment best.

Keywords: social dilemma; punishment; norm; evolutionary game theory; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 D64 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 38 pages
Date: 2003-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-pbe and nep-pol
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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http://www.middlebury.edu/services/econ/repec/mdl/ancoec/0213R.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Why Punish? Social reciprocity and the enforcement of prosocial norms (2004)
Working Paper: Why Punish: Social Reciprocity and the Enforcement of Prosocial Norms (2002)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mdl:mdlpap:0213r

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