Sanctions that Signal: an Experiment

Roberto Galbiati, Karl Schlag and Joel van der Weele ()
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Joel van der Weele: https://econ.univie.ac.at

Vienna Economics Papers from University of Vienna, Department of Economics

Abstract: Sanctions are a means to provide incentives towards more pro-social behavior. Yet their implementation can be a signal that past behavior was undesirable. We investigate experimentally the importance of the informational content of the choice to sanction. We place this in a context of a coordination game to focus attention on beliefs and information and less on intrinsic or pro-social motivations. We compare the effect of sanctions that are introduced exogenously by the experimenter to that of sanctions which have been actively chosen by a subject who takes the role of a fictitious policy maker with superior information about the previous effort of the other players. We find that cooperative subjects perceive actively chosen sanctions as a negative signal which eliminates for them the incentive effect of sanctions.

JEL-codes: C92 D83 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-03
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https://papersecon.univie.ac.at/RePEc/vie/viennp/vie1107.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Sanctions that signal: An experiment (2013)
Working Paper: Sanctions that signal: An experiment (2013)
Working Paper: Sanctions that signal: An experiment (2013)
Working Paper: Sanctions that Signal: an Experiment (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:vie:viennp:vie1107

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