The perils of government enforcement

Public Choice

Volumn 166, Issue 1-2, 2016, Pages 161-182

  Romaniuc, Rustam ^a,b,c   Farrow, Katherine ^b   Ibanez, Lisette ^b   Marciano, Alain ^b  

^a UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LILLE   (France)

^b Lameta and University of Montpellier 1   (France)

^c UNIVERSITY OF TURIN   (Italy)

Author keywords

Government enforcement; Peer control; Private enforcement; Public goods; Self governance

Indexed keywords

EID: 84961163608     PISSN: 00485829     EISSN: 15737101     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11127-016-0319-6     Document Type: Article

References (81)

1. Andreoni, J., & Miller, J. H. (2002). Giving according to GARP: An experimental test of the consistency of preferences for altruism. Econometrica, 70(2), 737–753.
2. Andreoni, J., & Gee, L. K. (2012). Gun for hire: Delegated enforcement and peer punishment in public goods provision. Journal of Public Economics, 96(11–12), 1036–1046.
3. Anderson, T., & Hill, P. J. (1977). An American experiment in anarcho-capitalism: The not so wild, wild West. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 3, 9–29.
4. Aviram, A. (2004). A paradox of spontaneous formation: The evolution of private legal systems. Yale Law & Policy Review, 22, 1–68.
5. Baldassarri, D., & Grossman, G. (2011). Centralized sanctioning and legitimate authority promote cooperation in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(27), 11023–11027.
6. Benabou, R. & Tirole, J. (2011). Laws and norms. NBER Working Paper No. 17579.
7. Benson, B. L. (1989). Enforcement of private property rights in primitive societies: Law without government. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 9(1), 1–26.
8. Benson, B. L. (1990). Customary law with private means of resolving disputes and dispensing justice: A description of a modern system of law and order without state coercion. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 9(2), 25–42.
9. Benson, B. L. (1991a). An evolutionary cntractarian view of primitive law: The institutions and incentives arising under customary American Indian law. Review of Austrian Economics, 5(1), 41–65.
10. Benson, B. L. (1991b). Reciprocal exchange as the basis for recognition of law: Examples from American history. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 10(1), 53–82.
11. Bernstein, L. (1992). Opting out of the legal system: Extralegal contractual relations in the diamond industry. Journal of Legal Studies, 21(1), 115–157.
12. Bicchieri, C. (2006). The grammar of society: The nature and dynamics of social norms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13. Boehm, C. (1999). Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitarian behavior. Harvard: Harvard University Press.
14. Boettke, P., Coyne, C., & Leeson, P. T. (2008). Institutional stickiness and the new development economics. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 67(2), 331–358.
15. Chaudhuri, A. (2011). Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: A selective survey of the literature. Experimental Economics, 14, 47–83.
16. Cooter, R. D. (1984). Prices and sanctions. Columbia Law Review, 84, 1523–1560.
17. Cooter, R. D. (1998). Expressive Law and Economics. Journal of Legal Studies, 27(2), 585–608.
18. Cooter, R. D. (2000). Three effects of social norms on law: Expression, deterrence, and internalization. Oregon Law Review, 79(1), 1–22.
19. Cox, J. C. (2004). How to identify trust and reciprocity. Games and Economic Behavior, 46(February), 260–281.
20. Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology, 8, 100–110.
21. Ellickson, R. (1991). Order without law: How neighbors settle disputes. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
22. Engel, C. (2014). Social preferences can make imperfect sanctions work: Evidence from a public good experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 108, 343–353.
23. Fehr, E., & Gaechter, S. (2000). Cooperation and punishment in public goods experiments. American Economic Review, 90(4), 980–994.
24. Feinberg, M., Cheng, J. T., & Willer, R. (2012). Gossip as an effective and low-cost form of punishment. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35(1), 25.
25. Feldman, Y. (2009). The expressive function of trade secret law: Legality, cost, intrinsic motivation, and consensus. Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, 6(1), 177–212.
26. Feldman, Y., & Taylor, T. R. (2011). Mandated justice: The political promise and possible pitfalls of mandating procedural justice in the workplace. Regulation & Governance, 6(1), 46–65.
27. Fleury, J.-B., & Marciano, A. (2014). Order, coordination, and collective action among the undead. In G. Whitman & J. P. Dow (Eds.), Economics of the undead: Blood, brains and benjamins. New York: Rowman and Littlefield.
28. Friedman, D. (1979). Private creation and enforcement of law—A historical case. Journal of Legal Studies, 8(2), 399–415.
29. Funk, P. (2007). Is there an expressive function of law? An empirical analysis of voting law with symbolic fines. American Law and Economics Review, 9(1), 135–159.
30. Gaechter, S. (2014). Human pro-social motivation and the maintenance of social order. In E. Zamir & D. Teichman (Eds.), Handbook on Behavioral Economics and the Law. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
31. Gaechter, S., & Fehr, E. (1999). Collective action as a social exchange. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 39(4), 341–369.
32. Gaechter, S., & Herrmann, D. (2009). Reciprocity, culture and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 364(1518), 791–806.
33. Giardini, F. (2012). Deterrence and transmission as mechanisms ensuring reliability of gossip. Cognitive Processing, 13(2), 465–475.
34. Giardini, F., & Conte, R. (2011). Gossip for social control in natural and artificial societies. Simulation, 88(1), 18–32.
35. Gneezy, U., & Rustichini, A. (2000). A fine is a price. Journal of Legal Studies, 29, 1–17.
36. Goeree, J. K., Holt, C. H., & Laury, S. K. (2002). Private costs and public benefits: Unraveling the effects of altruism and noisy behavior. Journal of Public Economics, 83, 255–276.
37. Greif, A. (1989). Reputation and coalitions in medieval trade: Evidence on the Maghribi traders. Journal of Economic History, XLIX, 857–882.
38. Greif, A. (1993). Contract enforceability and economic institutions in early trade: The Maghribi traders' coalition. American Economic Review, 83(3), 525–548.
39. Grenier, B. (2004). An online recruitment system for economic experiments. In: Kremer, K. and Macho, V. (eds.), Forshung und wissenschaftliches Rechnen, GWDG Bericht 63, 79–93.
40. Guala, F. (2012). Reciprocity: Weak or strong? What punishment experiments do (and do not) demonstrate. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 1–15.
41. Josselin, J.-M., & Marciano, A. (1995). Constitutionalism and common knowledge: Assessment and application to a future European constitution. Public Choice, 85(1–2), 173–188.
42. Josselin, J.-M., & Marciano, A. (1997). The paradox of Leviathan: How to develop and contain the future European state? European Journal of Law and Economics, 4(1), 5–21.
43. Josselin, J.-M., & Marciano, A. (2002). The making of the French Civil Code: An economic interpretation. European Journal of Law and Economics, 14, 193–203.
44. Karakostas, A., & Zizzo, D. J. (2015). Compliance and the power of authority. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization. doi:10.1016/j.jebo.2015.09.016.
45. Karayiannis, A. D., & Hatzis, A. N. (2012). Morality, social norms and the rule of law as transaction cost-saving devices: The case of ancient Athens. European Journal of Law and Economics, 33(3), 621–643.
46. Keser, C., & van Winden, F. (2000). Conditional cooperation and voluntary contributions to public goods. Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 102(1), 23–39.
47. Khadjavi, M. (2015). On the interaction of deterrence and emotions. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization. doi:10.1093/jleo/ewu012.
48. Ledyard, O. (1995). Public goods: some experimental results. In: Kagel, J. and Roth, A. (eds.), Handbook of experimental economics. Princeton: Princeton University Press (Chap. 2).
49. Leeson, P. T. (2007). Ann-arrgh-chy: The law and economics of pirate organization. Journal of Law & Economics, 115(6), 1049–1094.
50. Leeson, P. T. (2007). Trading with bandits. Journal of Law & Economics, 50, 303–321.
51. Leeson, P. T. (2009). The calculus of piratical consent: The myth of the myth of social contract. Public Choice, 139(3–4), 443–459.
52. Leeson, P. T. (2009b). The invisible hook: The hidden economics of pirates. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
53. Leeson, P. T. (2009). The laws of lawlessness. Journal of Legal Studies, 38(2), 471–503.
54. Leeson, P. T. (2013). Gypsy law. Public Choice, 155, 273–292.
55. Leeson, P. T. (2014). Pirates, prisoners, and preliterates: Anarchic context and the private enforcement of law. European Journal of Law and Economics, 37(3), 365–379.
56. Leeson, P. T. (2014 b). Anarchy unbound: Why self-governance works better than you think. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
57. Leeson, P. T. (2014). God damn: The law and economics of monastic malediction. Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 30(1), 193–216.
58. Leeson, P., & Skarbek, D. (2010). Criminal constitutions. Global Crime, 11(3), 279–298.
59. Masclet, D., Noussair, C., Tucker, S., & Villeval, M.-C. (2003). Monetary and nonmonetary punishment in the voluntary contributions mechanism. American Economic Review, 93(1), 366–380.
60. McAdams, R. H. (1997). The origin, development, and regulation of norms. Michigan Law Review, 96, 338–433.
61. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. Journal of Abnormal Social Psychology, 67, 371–378.
62. Nelissen, R. M. A., & Mulder, L. B. (2013). What makes a sanction stick? The effects of financial and social sanctions on norm compliance. Social Influence, 8(1), 70–80.
63. Nikiforakis, N. (2008). Punishment and counter-punishment in public good games: Can we really govern ourselves? Journal of Public Economics, 92, 91–112.
64. Ostrom, E., Walker, J., & Gardner, R. (1992). Covenants with and without a sword: Self-governance is possible. American Political Science Review, 86(2), 404–417.
65. Peden, J. R. (1977). Property rights in Celtic Irish law. Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1(2), 81–95.
66. Peysakhovich, A., & Rand, D. G. (2015). Habits of virtue: Creating norms of cooperation and defection in the laboratory. Management Science,. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2015.2168.
67. Posner, R. A., & Rasmusen, E. (1999). Creating and enforcing norms, with special reference to sanctions. International Review of Law and Economics, 19, 369–382.
68. Romaniuc, R. (2016). What makes law to change behavior? An experimental study. Review of Law and Economics, forthcoming.
69. Sened, I. (1997). The political institution of private property. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
70. Sobel, R. S., & Osoba, B. J. (2009). Youth gangs as pseudo-governments: Implications for violent crime. Southern Economic Journal, 75(4), 996–1018.
71. Solvasson, B. (1993). Institutional evolution in the Icelandic Commonwealth. Constitutional Political Economy, 4, 97–125.
72. Stagnaro, M. N., Arechar, A. A. & Rand, D. G. (2016). From good intentions to good norms: Top-down incentives to cooperate foster prosociality but not norm enforcement. Mimeo.
73. Stringham, E. P. (Ed.). (2005). Anarchy, state, and public choice. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
74. Stringham, E. P. (2015). Private governance: Creating order in economic and social life. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
75. Stringham, E. P., & Powel, B. (2009). Public choice and the economic analysis of anarchy: A survey. Public Choice, 140, 503–538.
76. Subhasish, D. (2013). Non-monetary incentives and opportunistic behavior: Evidence from a laboratory public good game. Economic Inquiry, 51(2), 1374–1388.
77. Sugden, R. (1986). The economics of rights, cooperation, and welfare. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
78. Sunstein, C. (1996). On the expressive function of law. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 144, 2021–2053.
79. Williamson, C. (2009). Informal institutions rule: Institutional arrangements and economic performance. Public Choice, 139(3), 371–387.
80. Xiao, E., & Houser, D. (2011). Punish in public. Journal of Public Economics, 95(7–8), 1006–1017.
81. Zizzo, D. J. (2010). Experimenter demand effects in economic experiments. Experimental Economics, 13(1), 75–98.