主题｜Topic：Laws and norms: empirical evidence
时间｜Time：5月24号（周五）｜May 24th (Friday), 2：00 - 4：30PM
地点｜Venue：文澴楼809会议室｜Meeting Room 809，WENHUAN
主讲｜Speaker
Tome Lane博士毕业于诺丁汉大学，获得经济学博士学位，现为宁波诺丁汉大学经济学助理教授。曾在 Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics 等期刊发表多篇学术文章。
研究领域｜Research Interests
行为经济学，实验经济学, 微观经济学，幸福经济学，文化经济学，经济学方法论
Behavioral Economics, Experimental Economics, Microeconomics, Happiness Economics, Cultural Economics, Economic Methodology
摘要｜Abstract
It is argued that social norms offer a powerful alternative to laws as a means of restricting antisocial behaviour. However, it is unclear whether laws and norms are pure substitutes, or laws also influence social norms. Despite a large theoretical literature on this question, there is scarce existing empirical evidence to answer it. To fill this gap, our paper reports an experiment measuring the effects of laws on social norms. We devise vignettes featuring actions whose legality is determined by threshold variables, in order to isolate the effects of legal discontinuities on the actions’ social appropriateness, which is elicited using the incentive-compatible task of Krupka and Weber (2013). Among samples in both the UK and China, laws are found to affect social norms, but the strength of the effect varies across different scenarios. A follow-up experiment with a representative UK sample probes the reasons for these differences.
