A Model of Social Duties

Organised by

• Department of Economics

We develop and test a formal model of social duties. Duties to respect entitle-ments (duties of justice) differ from duties to promote well-being (duties of charity).Utility functions obtain kinks where duties of justice and charity are exactly satisfied.Actions at these kinks are candidates for social norms. The model specifies portablemeasures of guilt from duty violations. It also generates implicit duties from situa-tional characteristics when explicit duties are incomplete. Empirically, implicit dutiesare either estimated from multiple choices or identified from Krupka–Weber appro-priateness ratings. The model rationalizes moral behaviors that are incompatible withaltruism and other consequentialist preferences.

Co-author: Erik Mohlin