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【Theory webinar】The Dynamics of Norm Formation and Decay


  • 研討會日期 : 2021-03-02
  • 時間 : 16:00
  • 主講人 : Professor Ernst Fehr
  • 地點 : online
  • 演講者簡介 : Professor Fehr received his Ph.D. in Economic from University of Vienna in 1986. He currently serves as director of the UBS International Center of Economics in Society at the University of Zurich. His research interests are Experimental, Behavioral and Neuroeconomics.
  • 演講摘要 : A large literature shares the view that social norms shape human cooperation. However, in the absence of a clean empirical identification of the relevant norms almost every behavior can be rationalized as norm-driven, thus rendering social norms useless as an explanatory construct. This raises the question whether there is a parsimonious and empirically convincing social norms-based explanation for major cooperation-related behavioral regularities and whether norms are indeed causal drivers of cooperative behavior. Here, we show that such an explanation is possible, that various powerful methods for the empirical identification of social norms exist, that they all support the existence of a norm of conditional cooperation and that social norms have causal effects. Norm compliance rests on fundamental motivational inclinations of humans (“social preferences”) that also imply a willingness to punish free-riders but normative constraints on peer punishment are important for its effectiveness and welfare properties. If given the chance, a large majority of people favor the imposition of such constraints through the migration to institutional environments that enable the normative guidance of cooperation and norm enforcement behaviors.