IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/csledp/9909.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

To Help or not to Help: The Samaritan's Dilemma Revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Schmidtchen, Dieter

Abstract

Helping somebody may undermine his incentives to work. What Buchanan identified more than 25 years ago as the Samaritan's dilemma is basically a time-inconsistency problem. The paper discusses possible solutions of the dilemma such as punishment within an iterated game, reshaping the game in the direction of a dynamic one-shot game and the delegation of the power of decision to an agent. The paper shows that only the latter option works.

Suggested Citation

  • Schmidtchen, Dieter, 1999. "To Help or not to Help: The Samaritan's Dilemma Revisited," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 99-09, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:csledp:9909
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/23060/1/9909help.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Assar Lindbeck & Sten Nyberg & Jörgen W. Weibull, 1999. "Social Norms and Economic Incentives in the Welfare State," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(1), pages 1-35.
    2. Heiner, Ronald A, 1983. "The Origin of Predictable Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(4), pages 560-595, September.
    3. Kirstein, Roland & Schmidtchen, Dieter, 1997. "Judicial detection skill and contractual compliance," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 509-520, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dijkstra, Bouwe R., 2007. "Samaritan versus rotten kid: Another look," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 91-110, September.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dieter Schmidtchen, "undated". "Wettbewerbsfreiheit, Per se Verbote und die Rule of Reason – Anmerkungen zum institutionenökonomisch-evolutionären Wettbewerbsleitbild
      Freedom to compete, per se rules and the rule of reason – Re      ," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2006-1-1159, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    2. Peter Wijck, 2013. "The economics of pre-crime interventions," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 441-458, June.
    3. Kirstein, Roland, 2002. "The new Basle Accord, internal ratings, and the incentives of banks," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 393-412, May.
    4. Schmidtchen Dieter, 2006. "Wettbewerbsschutz durch regelgeleitete Wettbewerbspolitik – Anmerkungen zum institutionenökonomisch-evolutionären Wettbewerbsleitbild / Protecting competition by a rule governed policy – Remarks on th," ORDO. Jahrbuch für die Ordnung von Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, De Gruyter, vol. 57(1), pages 165-189, January.
    5. Schmidtchen, Dieter, 2000. "Homo oeconomicus und das Recht," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2000-03, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    6. Roland Kirstein, "undated". "The Condorcet Jury-Theorem with Two Independent Error-Probabilities," German Working Papers in Law and Economics 2006-1-1154, Berkeley Electronic Press.
    7. Roland Kirstein, 2014. "Doping, the Inspection Game, and Bayesian Enforcement," Journal of Sports Economics, , vol. 15(4), pages 385-409, August.
    8. Kirstein, Roland, 2005. "Bayesian Monitoring," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2005-06, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    9. Schmidtchen, Dieter, 2006. "Wettbewerbsfreiheit, Per se Verbote und die Rule of Reason: Anmerkungen zum institutionenökonomisch-evolutionären Wettbewerbsleitbild," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2006-04, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    10. Schmidtchen, Dieter, 2006. "Wettbewerbsschutz durch regelgeleitete Wettbewerbspolitik: Anmerkungen zum institutionenökonomisch-evolutionären Wettbewerbsleitbild," CSLE Discussion Paper Series 2006-10, Saarland University, CSLE - Center for the Study of Law and Economics.
    11. Henrekson, Magnus & Johansson, Dan, 2010. "Firm Growth, Institutions and Structural Transformation," Ratio Working Papers 150, The Ratio Institute.
    12. H Peyton Young, 2014. "The Evolution of Social Norms," Economics Series Working Papers 726, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    13. Karla Hoff & Mayuresh Kshetramade & Ernst Fehr, 2011. "Caste and Punishment: the Legacy of Caste Culture in Norm Enforcement," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(556), pages 449-475, November.
    14. Victor Hiller, 2014. "Gender Inequality, Endogenous Cultural Norms, and Economic Development," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 116(2), pages 455-481, April.
    15. Jieming Zhu, 2005. "A Transitional Institution for the Emerging Land Market in Urban China," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 42(8), pages 1369-1390, July.
    16. Peter Wheale & David Hinton, 2007. "Ethical consumers in search of markets," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(4), pages 302-315, May.
    17. Christoph Engel, 2006. "The Difficult Reception of Rigorous Descriptive Social Science in the Law," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_1, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    18. Randall Morck & Lloyd Steier, 2005. "The Global History of Corporate Governance: An Introduction," NBER Chapters, in: A History of Corporate Governance around the World: Family Business Groups to Professional Managers, pages 1-64, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Amrish Patel & Edward Cartwright, 2012. "Naïve Beliefs and the Multiplicity of Social Norms," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 168(2), pages 280-289, June.
    20. Esser, Hartmut, 2005. "Rationalität und Bindung : das Modell der Frame-Selektion und die Erklärung des normativen Handelns," Papers 05-16, Sonderforschungsbreich 504.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Samaritan's Dilemma; Game Theory;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:zbw:csledp:9909. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fosaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.