title: Continuous punishment and the potential of gentle rule enforcement.
abstract: The paper explores the conditions that determine the effect of rule enforcement policies that imply an attempt to punish all the visible violations of the rule. We start with a simple game-theoretic analysis that highlights the value of gentle COntinuous Punishment (gentle COP) policies. If the subjects of the rule are rational, gentle COP can eliminate violations even when the rule enforcer has limited resources. The second part of the paper uses simulations to examine the robustness of gentle COP policies to likely deviations from rationality. The results suggest that when the probability of detecting violations is sufficiently high, gentle COP policies can be effective even when the subjects of the rule are boundedly rational adaptive learners. The paper concludes with experimental studies that clarify the value of gentle COP policies in the lab, and in attempt to eliminate cheating in exams.
authors.affiliation: Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel. erev@technion.ac.il
authors.forename: Ido
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Erev
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ingram
authors.forename: Ornit
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Raz
authors.forename: Dror
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shany
mesh_terms: D003198:Computer Simulation; D003657:Decision Making; D005106:Exploratory Behavior; D005260:Female; D005716:Game Theory; D005717:Games, Experimental; D006801:Humans; D007858:Learning; D008297:Male; D011336:Probability; D011678:Punishment; D012919:Social Behavior; D055815:Young Adult