Measuring Socially Appropriate Social Preferences

30 Pages Posted: 30 Sep 2022

See all articles by Jeffrey P. Carpenter

Jeffrey P. Carpenter

Middlebury College - Department of Economics; IZA Institute of Labor Economics

Andrea Robbett

Middlebury College - Department of Economics

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.

Keywords: experiment, social norms, social preferences, altruism, moral wiggle room, structural estimation, finite mixture models

JEL Classification: C91, D01, D91, D63, D30, C49

Suggested Citation

Carpenter, Jeffrey P. and Robbett, Andrea, Measuring Socially Appropriate Social Preferences. IZA Discussion Paper No. 15590, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4233805 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4233805

Jeffrey P. Carpenter (Contact Author)

Middlebury College - Department of Economics ( email )

Munroe Hall
Middlebury, VT 05753
United States
802-443-3241 (Phone)
802-443-2084 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://community.middlebury.edu/~jcarpent/index.ht

IZA Institute of Labor Economics

P.O. Box 7240
Bonn, D-53072
Germany

Andrea Robbett

Middlebury College - Department of Economics ( email )

Warner Hall
Middlebury, VT 05753
United States

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