Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/66255 
Year of Publication: 
1997
Series/Report no.: 
SFB 373 Discussion Paper No. 1997,44
Publisher: 
Humboldt University of Berlin, Interdisciplinary Research Project 373: Quantification and Simulation of Economic Processes, Berlin
Abstract: 
Can a court system conceivably control opportunistic behavior if judges are selected from the same population as ordinary citizens and thus are no better than the rest of us? This paper provides a new and, as we claim, quite profound rational choice answer to that unsolved riddle. Adopting an indirect evolutionary approach with endogenous preference formation the complex interactions between moral intrinsic motivation to behave non-opportunistically and extrinsic formal controls of opportunism are analysed. Under the assumption that judges are no better than ordinary citizens it is shown that introducing a court system can nevertheless prevent that the more trustworthy are driven out. It cannot be excluded, though, that courts may themselves crowd out trustworthiness under certain circumstances.
Subjects: 
Trust relationships
Evolutionary game theory
Intrinsic motivation
Court system
Legal litigation
Hobbesian problem of social order
JEL: 
A11
A13
C72
D74
K00
K12
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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