Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/214331 
Year of Publication: 
2005
Series/Report no.: 
CREMA Working Paper No. 2005-17
Publisher: 
Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA), Basel
Abstract: 
Law backed by non-deterrent sanctions (mild law) has been hypothesized to achieve compliance because of norm activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild law in the provision of public goods by comparing it to severe law (deterrent sanctions) and no law. The results show that exogenously imposing mild law does not achieve compliance, but compliance is much improved if mild law is endogenously chosen, i.e. self-imposed. We show that voting for mild law induces expectations of cooperation, and that people tend to comply with the law if they expect many others to do so.
Subjects: 
Deterrent effect of legal sanctions
Expressive law
Social norms
Public goods
Voting
JEL: 
C92
D72
K42
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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