Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/26876 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods No. 2005,12
Publisher: 
Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods, Bonn
Abstract: 
In recent debates, morality or social norms have been proposed as an instrument to reduce conflict behavior. As the argument goes, moral people will not engage in socially not-tolerated behavior or, less so than amoral people. Analyzing this question in the framework of contest theory, we find that if morality can discriminate between appropriation and defense, it is an effective instrument to lower socially unwanted behavior and support the enforcement of property rights. If it cannot discriminate between these different conflict efforts, strategic effects due to a one-sided increase in morality might actually lead to total increased conflict effort in the economy.
Subjects: 
Contests
property right enforcement
morality
education
JEL: 
D72
D74
I20
K42
Z13
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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