Markets are ubiquitous in our daily life and, despite many imperfections, they are a great source of human welfare. Nevertheless, there is a heated recent debate on whether markets erode social responsibility and moral behavior. In fact, competitive pressure on markets may create strong...

Many political issues like abortion, gay marriage or assisted suicide are strongly contested because individuals have preferences not only over their own choice but also about other individuals' actions. How should society decide these issues? This paper compares three regimes (centralization,...

This paper studies the optimal design of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) policies in an economy where individuals differ in their reproductive capacity (or fecundity) and in their wage. We find that the optimal ART policy varies with the postulated social welfare criterion....

This paper analyzes the efficient emissions taxation in economies with individuals who are morally motivated to reduce their emissions footprint. They are heterogenous with respect to their morality and their consumption preferences. We distinguish between the concepts of moral and conventional...

The widespread use of markets leads to unprecedented material well-being in many societies. We study whether market interaction, as a side effect, erodes moral values. An encompassing understanding of the virtues and vices of markets, including their possible impact on moral values, is necessary...

Numerous signaling models in economics assume image concerns. These take two forms, as relating either to social image or self-image. While empirical work has identified the behavioral importance of the former, little is known about the role of self-image concerns. We exogenously vary self-image...

We explore the role of cheap excuses in product choice. If a product improves upon one ethically relevant dimension, agents may care less about other, completely independent ethical facets of the product. This "static moral self-licensing" would extend the logic of the well studied moral...

We investigate the elasticity of moral ignorance with respect to monetary incentives and social norm information. We propose that individuals suffer from higher moral costs when rejecting a certain donation, and thus pay for moral ignorance. Consistent with our model, we find significant...

Literature in economics and psychology on moral behaviour explores the contexts in which people act in ways that are consistent or inconsistent with their past actions. Such inconsistencies appear to violate economists' assumption of rational consumer behaviour. In this note we show that a...

We examine whether belief-based preferences - caring about what transgressors believe - play a crucial role in punishment decisions: Do punishers want to make sure that transgressors understand why they are being punished, and is this desire to affect beliefs often prioritized over distributive...