A Meeting of the Minds: Informal Agreements and Social Norms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Krupka, Erin L.; Leider, Stephen; Jiang, Ming
• 署名单位: University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; IZA Institute Labor Economics; University of Michigan System; University of Michigan; Shanghai Jiao Tong University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2016.2429
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 1708-1729
• 关键词: economics; behavior and behavioral decision making; social norms; informal agreements

摘要

Using coordination games, we elicit social norms directly for two different games where either an agreement to take the first best action has been reached or where no such agreement exists. We combine the norms data with separately measured choice data to predict changes in behavior. We demonstrate that including social norms as a utility component significantly improves predictive performance. Then we compare social norms to guilt aversion and lying aversion. We estimate that honoring an agreement in the double dictator game is worth giving up approximately 10% of total earnings and more than 120% in the Bertrand game. We show that informal agreements affect behavior through their direct effect on social norms as well as through an indirect effect on beliefs.