The Esteem Theory of Norms
When esteem is costless to supply, does it provide an effectivemeans of enforcing norms for public goods production? I examine thebasic mechanics of an enforcement-through-esteem model. Whileesteem may enforce norms to considerable degree, systematicunderenforcement remains the general result, even in very basicsettings with a minimum of transactions costs. I also examine whyesteem has positive value in equilibrium if it can be producedcostlessly (i.e., why esteem remains scarce), and what collectiveaction problems plague the supply of esteem.
Cheap Talk with Two Audiences
These problems have in common a simple structure: an informed "sender" says something to two interested but uninformed "receivers," who then take actions based on their beliefs; these actions affect the sender as well as the receivers. In this paper we study how costless, nonverifiable claims (cheap talk) can affect these beliefs (and hence the actions), and how the incentives for truthful revelation to one receiver are affected by the presence of the other. We then ask how welfare is affected by whether claims are made in public or in private. As some of the above examples suggest, public messages may be more credible than private messages addressed to either audience. One possibility is that the presence of one audience can discipline the sender's relationship with the other; we call this one-sided
Some Experimental Evidence on Differences between Student and Prisoner Reactions to Monetary Penalties and Risk
In this article, we report on a series of laboratory experiments that investigate whether there are differences between criminals and the general population in their relative responsiveness to changes in the certainty and severity of punishment. The results of these experiments show that, while criminals are no less able than the general population to determine their financial self-interest, there are significant differences between these two groups in the effectiveness of increases in the certainty and severity of punishment in deterring antisocial behavior. Criminals appear to be much more responsive to the certainty of punishment than to its severity. In contrast, noncriminal students, consistent with a general aversion to risk, are more easily deterred by increases in severity than by increases in the certainty of punishment.