Can Contracts Signal Social Norms? Experimental Evidence

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Danilov, Anastasia; Sliwka, Dirk
• 署名单位: University of Cologne
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2015.2336
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 459-476
• 关键词: social norms; shirking; CONTRACTS; incentives; signaling; experiment; trust

摘要

We investigate whether incentive schemes signal social norms and thus affect behavior beyond their direct economic consequences. A one-shot principal-agent experiment is studied where prior to contract choice principals are informed about the past actions of other agents and thus have more information about norms of behavior. Compared with a setting in which principals are uninformed, agents exert substantially higher effort under a fixed wage contract when they are aware that an informed principal chose this contract. The informed principal's choice apparently signals a norm not to exploit trust, which leads to more trustworthy behavior. This mechanism's robustness is explored in further experiments.