underlying such acts? Will people rely on "excuses" to avoid acting on costly punishment intentions, as with other costly pro …-social acts? In a laboratory experiment, we find that third parties punish reluctantly: they state a preference to punish, but … differences in motives underlying second- and third-party punishment. …

Punishment can lose its legitimacy if the enforcer can profit from delivering punishment. We examine how justification … can promote the legitimacy of punishment in a one-shot sender-receiver game where an independent third party can punish … the sender upon seeing whether the sender lied. Most third parties who can profit from punishment punish the senders …

We report data from public goods games showing that privately-implemented punishment reduces cooperation in relation to … a baseline treatment without punishment. When that same incentive is implemented publicly, however, cooperation is … sustained at significantly higher rates than in either the baseline or private punishment treatments. Our design ensures that …

become revenue for authorities and thus motivate profit-seeking punishment. In this paper, we design a novel experiment to …Punishment typically involves depriving violators of resources they own such as money or labor. These resources can … provide direct evidence on the role punishment plays in communicating norms. Importantly, this allows us to provide …