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IZA Discussion Paper No. 8973
April 2015
Market Design and Moral Behavior

published in: Management Science, 2016, 62, 2615-2625

In an experiment with 739 subjects we study whether and how different interventions might have an influence on the degree of moral behavior when subjects make decisions that can generate negative externalities on uninvolved parties. Particularly, subjects can either take money for themselves or donate it to UNICEF for measles vaccines. By considering two fairly different institutional regimes – one with individual decision making, one with a double-auction market – we expose the different interventions to a kind of robustness check. We find that the threat of monetary punishment promotes moral behavior in both regimes. Getting subjects more involved with the traded good has no effect, though, in both regimes. Only the removal of anonymity, thus making subjects identifiable, has different effects across regimes, which we explain by different perceptions of responsibility.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

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