Social preferences and public economics: Mechanism design when social preferences depend on incentives

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bowles, Samuel; Hwang, Sung-Ha
• 署名单位: The Santa Fe Institute; University of Siena; University of Massachusetts System; University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2008.03.006
• 发表日期: 2008
• 页码: 1811-1820
• 关键词: social preferences; implementation theory; incentive contracts; incomplete contracts; framing; motivational crowding out; ethical norms; constitutions

摘要

Social preferences such as altruism, reciprocity, intrinsic motivation and a desire to uphold ethical norms are essential to good government, often facilitating socially desirable allocations that would be unattainable by incentives that appeal solely to self-interest. But experimental and other evidence indicates that conventional economic incentives and social preferences may be either complements or substitutes, explicit incentives crowding in or crowding out social preferences. We investigate the design of optimal incentives to contribute to a public good under these effects would make either more or less use of explicit incentives, by comparison to a naive planner who assumes they are absent. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.