The enforcement of social norms is the fabric of a functioning society. Through the lens of mul-tiple studies using different methodologies (a behavioral experiment and a vignette experiment in Study 1, as well as a norm elicitation experiment in Study 2), we examine how motives for lying and...

Very little is known about the efficient collection of fines despite their indispensable contribution to local government budgets. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by studying the effectiveness of deterrence (enforcement) and non-deterrence (social norms) letters that aim to...

Very little is known about the efficient collection of fines despite their indispensable contribution to local government budgets. This paper fills an important gap in the literature by studying the effectiveness of deterrence (enforcement) and non-deterrence (social norms) letters that aim to...

Despite widespread mis-characterization and misconception about its policy objective and content, China's social credit system project at this point consists primarily of a set of new approaches to enforcing conduct norms that already exist in the country's multi-layered legal and extralegal...

The use of social sanctions against behaviour which contradicts a set of informal rules is often an important element in the functioning of informal institutions in traditional societies. In the social sciences, sanctioning behaviour has often been explained in terms of the internalisation of...

In small groups norm enforcement is provided by mutual punishment and reward. In large societies we have enforcement institutions. This paper shows how such institutions can emerge as a decentralized equilibrium. In a first stage, individuals invest in a public enforcement technology. This...