Agenda

Relatore: David Levine - European University Institute and Washington University in St. Louis

Abstract: We study the consequences of endogenous social norms that overcome public goods problems by providing incentives through peer monitoring and ostracism. We examine incentives both for producers and for monitors. The theory has applications to organizational design - offering possible explanations for why police are rotated between precincts while professional organizations such as doctors are self-policing. It leads to a Lucas critique for experiments and "natural" experiments - a small level of intervention may be insufficient to produce changes in social norms while a high level of intervention may have a very different effect because it becomes desirable to change social norms. Finally we study the internalization of social norms - showing how on the one hand it makes it possible to overcome incentive problems that pure monitoring and punishment cannot, and on the other how it leads to an interesting set of trade-offs. We conclude with some discussion of cultural norms where norms are not established benevolently by a particular group for its benefit but established by others for their own benefit.