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Taking punishment into your own hands: An experiment on the motivation underlying punishment

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  • Duersch, Peter
  • Müller, Julia

Abstract

In a punishment experiment, we separate the demand for punishment in general from a possible 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. This auction only resolves who will punish, not whether punishment takes place, so only subjects with a demand for personal punishment should bid.

Suggested Citation

  • Duersch, Peter & Müller, Julia, 2010. "Taking punishment into your own hands: An experiment on the motivation underlying punishment," Working Papers 0501, University of Heidelberg, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:awi:wpaper:0501
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Aurelie Ouss & Alexander Peysakhovich, 2015. "When Punishment Doesn't Pay: "Cold Glow" and Decisions to Punish," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 58(3).
    2. Harel Alon & Procaccia Yuval & Ritov Ilana, 2017. "On the Economic Effects of Disobeyed Regulation in Employment Law," Review of Law & Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(2), pages 1-24, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    personal punishment; real effort task; experiment; auction; desire to win;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

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

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