This paper analyzes the interplay between economic incentives and social norms in a public finance context. We assume that to live off one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population fraction adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is felt by the individual. It is shown...

This paper analyzes the interplay between economic incentives and social norms in a public finance context. We assume that to live one's own work is a social norm, and that the larger the population fraction adhering to this norm, the more intensely it is felt by the individual.

We provide a cultural explanation to the phenomenon of corruption in the framework of an overlapping generations model with intergenerational transmission of values. We show that the economy has two steady states with different levels of corruption.