This article studies the optimal use of fines and imprisonment when an offender’s level of wealth cannot be observed by the enforcement authority. I employ a model in which there are two types of offenders — a low-wealth type and a high-wealth type. The consequence of the unobservability of wealth depends on whether the enforcement authority would employ fines alone, or would also impose impris...

Pregnant women who abuse drugs, such as alcohol, cocaine, and marihuana may face a variety of legal and social responses, including involuntary commitment, forced treatment, and criminal sanctions. These programs are intended to remedy apparent maternal-fetal conflicts but paradoxically may encourage some women to avoid beneficial medical and social services or to seek abortion. Although pregna...

The threat of free-riding makes the marshalling of cooperation from group members a fundamental challenge of social life. Where classical social science theory saw the enforcement of moral boundaries as a critical way by which group members regulate one another's self-interest and build cooperation, moral judgments have most often been studied as processes internal to individuals. Here we inves...

the impact of the international sanctions on the central bank of iran in 2013 and also accessibility of medicines in this country have received a lot of media coverage. in this study we used the data collected from a group of pharmacies all located in tehran to assess the potential effects of the banking sanctions on access to asthma medicines. data were collected from forty community pharmacie...

In human societies, cooperative behavior in joint enterprises is often enforced through institutions that impose sanctions on defectors. Many experiments on so-called public goods games have shown that in the absence of such institutions, individuals are willing to punish defectors, even at a cost to themselves. Theoretical models confirm that social norms prescribing the punishment of uncooper...

Ð For as long as people have managed natural resources, they have engaged in collective action. But development assistance has paid too little attention to how social and human capital a€ects environmental outcomes. Social capital comprises relations of trust, reciprocity, common rules, norms and sanctions, and connectedness in institutions. Recent years have seen remarkable advances in group f...

The decisions and actions of health care managers are oftentimes heavily scrutinized by the public. Given the current economic climate, managers may feel intense pressure to produce higher results with fewer resources. This could inadvertently test their moral fortitude and their social consciousness. A study was conducted to determine what corporate social responsibility orientation and viewpo...

We conduct a set of field experiments in rural Paraguay to measure the value of reciprocity within social networks in a set of fifteen villages. These experiments involve conducting dictatortype games; different treatments involve manipulating the information and choice that individuals have in the game. These different treatments allow us to measure and distinguish between different motives fo...