We consider a society with informed individuals (adults) and naive individuals (children). Adults are altruistic towards their own children and possess information that allows to better predict the behavior of other adults. Children benefit from adopting behaviors that conform to the social norm...

We formally explore the idea that punishment of norm-breakers may be a vehicle for the older generation to teach youngsters about social norms. We show that this signaling role provides sufficient incentives to sustain costly punishing behavior. People punish norm-breakers to pass information...

Signaling models of esteem have implications for peer pressure. Using Bénabou's and Tirole's "honor-stigma" model, we analyze how the pressure to engage in costly signaling changes with the distribution of peers' attributes. In particular, we provide novel comparative statics on the effects of...

In a simple static model of differentiated experience goods supplied by a single seller, we show that both a uniform price equilibrium and a price signalling equilibrium coexist. This is in contrast to the received wisdom that price signalling of quality is nonviable in static settings. We also...