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Driving Forces of Informal Sanctions

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Author Info
Armin Falk
Ernst Fehr
Urs Fischbacher

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Abstract

Informal sanctions are a major determinant of a society's social capital because they are key to the enforcement of implicit agreements and social norms. Yet, little is known about the driving forces behind informal sanctions. We systematically examine the determinants of informal sanctions by a large number of experiments. Our findings show that the violation of fairness principles is the most important driving force of sanctions but, in addition, a non-negligible part of the sanctions is driven by spitefulness. We find surprisingly little evidence for strategic sanctions that are imposed to create future material benefits. While non-strategic sanctions are of major importance in our experiments, strategic sanctions seem to play a negligible role. Within the class of fairness-driven sanctions the motive to harm those who committed unfair actions seems most important.

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Paper provided by Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - IEW in its series IEW - Working Papers with number iewwp059.

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Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:059

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Related research
Keywords: informal sanction; social norm; social capital; strategic sanction; fairness; reciprocity; spitefulness;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
D23 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Organizational Behavior; Transaction Costs; Property Rights
C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
K42 - Law and Economics - - Legal Procedure, the Legal System, and Illegal Behavior - - - Illegal Behavior and the Enforcement of Law

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