Punishment and social norms. On the ecological validity of punishment in experimental economics, part II

Authors

Abstract

This article corresponds to the second part of the article entitled Punishment and social norms: on the ecological validity of punishment in experimental economics. In the first part I developed a series of arguments that throw uncertainty about the legitimacy of inferring that the cause of the application of punishment in experimental games is univocally the transgression of social norms. In this part, I offer a theoretical defence of a method that has the potential to respond to the problems of normative irrelevance and the illegitimacy of punishment in experimental games, and which consists in the introduction of explicit norms.

Keywords:

punishment, social norms, ecological validity, legitimacy, experimental economics