A Theory of Equality Before the Law
构建了一个模型，解释法律面前人人平等如何出现。精英控制暴力时，社会靠惩罚维持高努力但伴随高不平等；而法律平等能提高精英努力，进而通过合作激励提升非精英努力，最终实现高惩罚与低不平等的组合。
Abstract We propose a simple model of the emergence of equality before the law. A society can support effort (‘cooperation’, ‘prosocial behaviour’) using the carrot of future cooperation or the stick of coercive punishment. Community enforcement relies only on the carrot and involves low coercion, low inequality and low effort. A society in which elites control the means of violence supplements the carrot with the stick, and involves high coercion, high inequality and high effort. In this regime, elites are privileged by both laws and norms: because they are not subject to the same punishments as non-elites, norms are also more favourable for them. Nevertheless, it may be optimal—even from the elites’ perspective—to establish equality before the law, where all agents are subject to the same coercive punishments and norms are more equal. The key mechanism is that equality before the law increases elites’ effort, which improves the carrot of future cooperation and thus encourages even higher effort from non-elites. Equality before the law combines high coercion and low inequality. Factors that make equality before the law more likely to emerge include limits on the extent of coercion, greater marginal returns to effort, increases in the size of the elite group, greater political power for non-elites and, under some additional conditions, lower economic inequality.