| By: |
Jordi Brandts;
María Fernanda Rivas |
| Abstract: |
The existence of punishment opportunities has been shown to cause efficiency
in public goods experiments to increase considerably. In this paper we ask
whether punishment also has a downside in terms of process dissatisfaction. We
conduct an experiment to study the conjecture that an environment with
stronger punishment possibilities leads to higher material but lower
subjective well-being. The more general motivation for our study stems from
the notion that people??s subjective well-being may be affected by the
institutional environment they find themselves in. Our findings show that
harsher punishment possibilities lead to signficantly higher well-being,
controlling for earnings and other relevant variables. People derive
independent satisfaction from interacting under the protection of strong
punishment possibilities. These results complement the evidence on the neural
basis of altruistic punishment reported in de Quervain et al. (2004). |
| Keywords: |
Public Goods, Experiments, Well-being, Punishment |
| JEL: |
C92 D60 H40 |
| Date: |
2007–06–15 |
| URL: |
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:aub:autbar:705.07&r=neu |