Andreas Bergh
Senior lecturer
Accounting for Context : Separating Monetary and (Uncertain) Social Incentives
Author
Summary, in English
This paper proposes a simple framework to model social preferences in a way that explicitly separates economic incentives from social (context) effects and allows for uncertainty also about the latter. Moreover, it allows non-economic cost associated with the deviation from some norm to be more discriminatory than just “right” or “wrong.” We refer to existing evidence on dictator game giving to demonstrate how intermediate behaviours (giving some) as well as payments to change the context (e.g. exiting the game) can be accounted for. Furthermore, the framework is used to exemplify both theoretically and empirically how contextual variables such as social norms can worsen a social dilemma or possibly make it disappear. The empirical results of a classroom experiment suggest that women are more responsive to such contextual effects.
Department/s
- Department of Economics
- Centre for Economic Demography
Publishing year
2018
Language
English
Pages
61-66
Publication/Series
Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics
Volume
72
Full text
- Available as PDF - 252 kB
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Document type
Journal article
Publisher
Elsevier
Topic
- Economics
Keywords
- social norms
- experimental economics
- game theory
- context effects
- efficiency
- social preferences
- utility
- D03
- D63
- Z10
Status
Published
ISBN/ISSN/Other
- ISSN: 2214-8043