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Caste and Punishment: The Legacy of Caste Culture in Norm Enforcement

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Author Info
Hoff, Karla () (World Bank)
Kshetramade, Mayuresh () (affiliation not available)
Fehr, Ernst () (University of Zurich)

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Abstract

Well-functioning groups enforce social norms that restrain opportunism, but the social structure of a society may encourage or inhibit norm enforcement. Here we study how the exogenous assignment to different positions in an extreme social hierarchy – the caste system – affects individuals' willingness to punish violations of a cooperation norm. Although we control for individual wealth, education, and political participation, low caste individuals exhibit a much lower willingness to punish norm violations that hurt members of their own caste, suggesting a cultural difference across caste status in the concern for members of one's own community. The lower willingness to punish may inhibit the low caste's ability to sustain collective action and so may contribute to its economic vulnerability.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 4343.

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Length: 48 pages
Date of creation: Aug 2009
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Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4343

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Related research
Keywords: social norms; informal sanctions; third party punishment; endogenous social preferences; social exclusion; collective action; caste;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
D02 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Institutions: Design, Formation, and Operations
D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism

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References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2004. "Third-party punishment and social norms," Experimental 0409002, EconWPA. [Downloadable!]
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  2. Jeffrey Carpenter & Peter Hans Matthews, 2005. "Norm Enforcement: Anger, Indignation or Reciprocity?," Middlebury College Working Paper Series 0503, Middlebury College, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  3. Fehr, Ernst & Hoff, Karla & Kshetramade, Mayuresh, 2008. "Spite and development," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4619, The World Bank. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  4. Assar Lindbeck & Sten Nyberg & Jšrgen W. Weibull, 1999. "Social Norms And Economic Incentives In The Welfare State," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 114(1), pages 1-35, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Abhijit Banerjee & Lakshmi Iyer, 2005. "History, Institutions, and Economic Performance: The Legacy of Colonial Land Tenure Systems in India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1190-1213, September. [Downloadable!]
  6. Trevon Logan & Manisha Shah, 2009. "Face Value: Information and Signaling in an Illegal Market," NBER Working Papers 14841, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Martin G. Kocher & Todd L. Cherry & Stephan Kroll & Robert J. Netzer & Matthias Sutter, 2007. "Conditional cooperation on three continents," Working Papers 2007-02, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, University of Innsbruck. [Downloadable!]
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This page was last updated on 2009-11-23.

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