Laws and Norms
分析了个人和社会偏好、物质激励与社会规范如何塑造私人决策和最优公共政策，研究了荣誉与耻辱如何与激励相互作用，并推导了最优税收。
We analyze how private decisions and optimal public policies are shaped by personal and societal preferences, material incentives, and social norms. We show how honor and stigma interact with incentives and derive optimal taxation. We then analyze the expressive role of law as embodying society’s values and identify when it calls for a weakening or a strengthening of incentives. The law should be softened when it signals agents’ general willingness to contribute to the public good and toughened when it signals social externalities. We also shed light on norms-based interventions, societies’ resistance to economists’ messages, and the avoidance of cruel and unusual punishments.