On the Complementarity between Law and Social Norms
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Atsushi Tsuneki
und
Yoshinobu Zasu
Abstract
This article aims to clarify the relationship between the law and social norms and examine how they interact – whether the law completely replaces, or coexists with, the pre-existing social norms. We model a close-knit society consisting of injurers and victims, assuming that both the law and social norms maximize social welfare and that the costs of enforcing legal penalties are greater than those of enforcing social norms. We find that social norms completely replace the law, even in a non-cooperative Nash equilibrium; we then develop exceptions to this result. In particular, when community sanctions for violating social norms are calibrated without consideration of its marginal social benefit due to a reduction in law enforcement cost, our model can have multiple equilibria, including cases in which legal sanctions persist even in the long run, in spite of their inefficiently high enforcement costs. However, we also show that this possibility of an inefficient non-cooperative equilibrium can be eliminated if the government behaves as a Stackelberg leader for the formation of social norms.
Funding statement: Funding: This research is financially supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research No. 26490046 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science.
Acknowledgements
The authors are deeply grateful for the detailed comments and insightful suggestions of the reviewer, which helped in the completion of this article. We also thank David Flath for his many comments and suggestions, as well as Tomotaka Fujita, Takeshi Fujitani, and Wataru Tanaka for their comments.
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©2015 by De Gruyter
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Sentencing Discounts, Attorney Compensation and Plea Bargaining in Criminal Cases
- Optimal Marginal Deterrence and Incentives for Precaution
- The Deterrence Effects of Gun Laws in Games with Asymmetric Skills and Information
- Decomposition of Accident Loss and Efficiency of Liability Rules
- Day-Fines: Should the Rich Pay More?
- On the Complementarity between Law and Social Norms
- Can Decoupling Punitive Damages Deter an Injurer’s Harmful Activity?
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Sentencing Discounts, Attorney Compensation and Plea Bargaining in Criminal Cases
- Optimal Marginal Deterrence and Incentives for Precaution
- The Deterrence Effects of Gun Laws in Games with Asymmetric Skills and Information
- Decomposition of Accident Loss and Efficiency of Liability Rules
- Day-Fines: Should the Rich Pay More?
- On the Complementarity between Law and Social Norms
- Can Decoupling Punitive Damages Deter an Injurer’s Harmful Activity?
