The Power of Leadership in changing Social Norms
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Series
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Speaker(s)Marie Claire Villeval (CNRS – University of Lyon, France)
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FieldBehavioral Economics
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LocationUniversity of Amsterdam, Roeterseiland Campus, room B3.09
Amsterdam -
Date and time
March 16, 2023
16:00 - 17:15
Abstract
We investigate whether a leader can trigger
or impede the change of a social norm in the society. We focus on the dynamic
setting introduced by Andreoni et al. (2021) where a norm that was beneficial
for the society becomes detrimental over time. In a laboratory experiment we
introduce a leader and vary whether the leader’s incentives are aligned or not
with the incentives of the rest of the society. Whereas norms are sticky in the
absence of a leader, leading to a conformity trap in conservative societies, we
find that the leader always manages to change the social norm in the society
regardless of the strategy used by the leader (bottom-up or top-down), the type
of the leader, or the type of society (advanced vs. conservative). Joint paper with Fabio Galeotti and Jona Krutaj.