Creating and Enforcing Norms, With Special Reference to Sanctions

Richard Posner and Eric Rasmusen ()

Law and Economics from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Two central puzzles about social norms are how they are enforced and how they are created or modified. The sanctions for violation of a norm can be categorized as automatic, guilt, shame, informational, bilateral- costly, and multilateral-costly. Problems in creating and enforcing norms are related to which sanctions are employed. We use our analysis of enforcement and creation of norms to analyze the scope of feasible government action either to promote desirable norms or to repress undesirable ones.

Keywords: norms; punishment; sanctions; ostracism; collective action problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: K00 P00 P50 Z10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1999-07-13
Note: Type of Document - Pdf; prepared on IBM PC ; to print on ;
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (81)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Creating and Enforcing Norms, with Special Reference to Sanctions (1998)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wpa:wuwple:9907004

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