During the Civil War not all men served honorably and this was known by everyone in their communities. We study how shame and ostracism affect behavior by examining whether men who deserted from the Union Army, and who faced no legal sanctions once the war was over, returned home or whether they moved and re-invented themselves. We build a unique panel data set that provides us with a control group for deserters because we can identify men who deserted but then returned to fight with their companies. We find that, compared to non-deserters and returned deserters, deserters were more likely to move both out of state and further distances. This effect was stronger for deserters from pro-war communities. When deserters moved they were more likely to move to anti-war states than non-deserters. Our study provides a rare test of the empirical implications of emotion. While both shame and ostracism would push deserters out of their home community, we find no evidence that deserters faced economic sanctions.
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Paper provided by National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc in its series NBER Working Papers with number
10425.
Length: Date of creation: Apr 2004 Date of revision: Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:10425
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Find related papers by JEL classification: Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology
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Marianne Bertrand & Erzo F. P. Luttmer & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1999.
"Network Effects and Welfare Cultures,"
Working Papers
9903, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
[Downloadable!]
Marianne Bertrand & Erzo F.P. Luttmer & Sendhil Mullainathan, 1999.
"Network Effects and Welfare Cultures,"
JCPR Working Papers
62, Northwestern University/University of Chicago Joint Center for Poverty Research.
[Downloadable!]
Bertrand, M. & Luttmer, E.F.P. & Mullainathan, S., 1998.
"Network Effects and Welfare Cultures,"
Papers
201, Princeton, Woodrow Wilson School - Public and International Affairs.
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