Economic theory suggests that the deterrence of deviant behavior is driven by a combination of severity and certainty … of punishment. This paper presents the first controlled experiment to study a third important factor that has been mainly … will be punished is dissolved and the timing at which the punishment is actually imposed, as well as the combination …

Economic theory suggests that the deterrence of deviant behavior is driven by a combination of severity and certainty … of punishment. This paper presents the first controlled experiment to study a third important factor that has been mainly … will be punished is dissolved and the timing at which the punishment is actually imposed, as well as the combination …

sanction those who are detected performing the bad act of free-riding. There has been considerable research on the type of …

actions seems most important. key-words: Informal Sanction, Social Norm, Social Capital, Strategic Sanction, Fairness …

theories of fairness and reciprocity capture these forces. We find that cooperators' punishment is almost exclusively targeted … towards the defectors but the latter also impose a considerable amount of spiteful punishment on the cooperators. However …, spiteful punishment vanishes if the punishers can no longer affect the payoff differences between themselves and the punished …

sanction those who are detected performing the bad act of free-riding. There has been considerable research on the type of …

particular, under severe sanction threats most trustees return the desired amount, while under weak threats the most common … or randomly by nature. We suggest that credible sanction threats generate a "cognitive shift" that crowd-out norm …

, even if punishment is costly. However, these studies focus on situations where there is no uncertainty about others …' behavior. We investigate punishment in a world with “reasonable doubt” about others' contributions. Interestingly, people … some non-trivial degree of noise, punishment (1) cannot maintain high contributions and (2) reduces welfare even below the …

of fines on punishment and deterrence. Partial effects are effects on potential violators' and punishers' decisions when … hypotheses derived from the theory …