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Taking punishment into your own hands: An experiment

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  • Duersch, Peter
  • Müller, Julia

Abstract

In a punishment experiment, we separate the demand for punishment in general from the demand to conduct punishment personally. Subjects experience an unfair split of their earnings from a real effort task and have to decide on the punishment of the person who determines the distribution. First, it is established whether the allocator’s payoff is reduced and, afterwards, subjects take part in a second price auction for the right to (physically) carry out the act of payoff reduction themselves. Subjects bid positive amounts and are happier if they get to punish personally.

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  • Duersch, Peter & Müller, Julia, 2015. "Taking punishment into your own hands: An experiment," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 1-11.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joepsy:v:46:y:2015:i:c:p:1-11
    DOI: 10.1016/j.joep.2014.10.004
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    Cited by:

    1. Peter Duersch & Julia Müller, 2017. "Bidding for nothing? The pitfalls of overly neutral framing," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(13), pages 932-935, July.
    2. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David, 2015. "Emotion venting and punishment in public good experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 55-67.
    3. Laura K. Gee & Xinxin Lyu & Heather Urry, 2017. "Anger Management: Aggression and Punishment in the Provision of Public Goods," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-28, January.
    4. Gago, Andrés, 2021. "Reciprocity and uncertainty: When do people forgive?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 84(C).
    5. Florian Baumann & Tim Friehe & Pascal Langenbach, 2020. "Fines versus Damages: Experimental Evidence on Care Investments," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2020_08, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, revised Mar 2024.
    6. Florian Baumann & Sophie Bienenstock & Tim Friehe & Maiva Ropaul, 2023. "Fines as enforcers’ rewards or as a transfer to society at large? Evidence on deterrence and enforcement implications," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 196(3), pages 229-255, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Personal punishment; Real effort task; Experiment; Second price auction;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles

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