Inequality Aversion and Antisocial Punishment

Christian Thöni

No 1111, Economics Working Paper Series from University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science

Abstract: Antisocial punishment - punishment of pro-social cooperators - has shown to be detrimental for the efficiency of informal punishment mechanisms in public goods games. The motives behind antisocial punishment acts are not yet well understood. This article shows that inequality aversion predicts antisocial punishment in public goods games with punishment. The model by Fehr and Schmidt (1999) allows to derive conditions under which antisocial punishment occurs. With data from three studies on public goods games with punishment I evaluate the predictions. A majority of the observed antisocial punishment acts are not compatible with inequality aversion. These results suggest that the desire to equalize payoffs is not a major determinant of antisocial punishment.

Keywords: Antisocial punishment; inequality aversion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D03 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2011-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-evo
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Journal Article: Inequality aversion and antisocial punishment (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:usg:econwp:2011:11

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