On punishment and well-being
Brandts, Jordi
Rivas, María Fernanda
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica
Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica

Date: 2007
Description: 32 p.
Abstract: The existence of punishment opportunities has been shown to cause efficiency in public goods experiments to increase considerably. In this paper we ask whether punishment also has a downside in terms of process dissatisfaction. We conduct an experiment to study the conjecture that an environment with stronger punishment possibilities leads to higher material but lower subjective well-being. The more general motivation for our study stems from the notion that people??s subjective well-being may be affected by the institutional environment they find themselves in. Our findings show that harsher punishment possibilities lead to signficantly higher well-being, controlling for earnings and other relevant variables. People derive independent satisfaction from interacting under the protection of strong punishment possibilities. These results complement the evidence on the neural basis of altruistic punishment reported in de Quervain et al. (2004).
Rights: Aquest document està subjecte a una llicència d'ús Creative Commons. Es permet la reproducció total o parcial, la distribució, i la comunicació pública de l'obra, sempre que no sigui amb finalitats comercials, i sempre que es reconegui l'autoria de l'obra original. No es permet la creació d'obres derivades. Creative Commons
Language: Anglès
Series: Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica. Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica / Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC). Working papers
Series: Working papers ; 705.07
Document: Working paper
Subject: Béns públics ; Economia del benestar



32 p, 267.2 KB

The record appears in these collections:
Research literature > Working papers > Fundamentals Unit of the Economic Analysis. Working papers

 Record created 2009-07-15, last modified 2024-05-26



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