Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/265811 
Year of Publication: 
2022
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 15590
Publisher: 
Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We extend the literature structurally estimating social preferences by accounting for the desire to adhere to social norms. Our representative agent is strongly motivated by norms and failing to account for this causes us to overestimate how much agents care about helping those who are worse off. We endogenously identify latent preference types that replicate previous estimates; however, accounting for the normative appropriateness of decisions reveals different motives. Rather than being mostly altruistic, participants are better described as strong altruists or norm followers. Our results (which are robust to moral wiggle room) thus recast prior findings in a new light.
Subjects: 
experiment
social norms
social preferences
altruism
moral wiggle room
structural estimation
finite mixture models
JEL: 
C91
D01
D91
D63
D30
C49
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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