Asymmetric social norms

Social Norms

Social norms and customs shape many economic decisions, but they have not always been at the forefront of economic analysis. Indeed, social influences were more prominently acknowledged by the founders of the discipline than by neoclassical theorists of the last century. J.S. Mill, for example, argued that custom was a potent force in setting the terms of contracts and also the wages paid to la...

Social Norms

Social Norms and Moral Norms Workshop Social Norms and Moral Norms Workshop Welcome Address

Dear Participant, We are very pleased to welcome you at the GATE research institute. This workshop aims at developing scientific discussions about Social Norms and Moral Norms. The objective is to better understand when people are more, or less, likely to act honestly and follow the moral course of action and norms instead of serving their strict self-interest at the others' expense. We are ext...

Social Exclusion and Social Norms

Being excluded and ignored has been shown to threaten fundamental human needs and cause pain. Such reflexive reactions to social exclusion have been conceptualized as direct and unmoderated (temporal need threat model, Williams, 2009). Here we propose an extension and argue that reflexive reactions depend on how social exclusion situations are construed. If being excluded is understood as a vio...

Social Norms in Social Insurance

We analyze how insurance arrangements, labor supply, moral hazard and outright cheating are affected by social norms. One question is under what conditions norms may improve social welfare. Another is under what conditions people should be allowed to opt out of social insurance. We introduce an informal production sector to analyze the consequences of alternative assumptions about the informati...