The Economics Of Shaming Sanctions

Shaming sanctions are punishments that deter offenses by publicizing offenders' personal information so that the offenders can be dispelled by the whole community. Superseding the moral critics, this thesis tries to inspect shaming sanctions in details and expects to give some practical proposals. The main tool in this thesis is signaling model, a model from economics and game theories. Taking advantage of this model and aiming to make the mechanics and subsequent effects of shaming sanctions more clearly, this thesis analyzes the functions, reasons, comparative advantages and limitations of shaming sanctions.The preface introduces the researching object and goal of this thesis, and it also gives a brief description on the academic tradition this thesis keeps up.The first section analyzes several opinions on shaming sanctions and summarizes its' own points. Moreover, it gives a brief description on the history of practices at home and abroad.After having given an introduction of the signaling model, the second section mainly analyzes the mechanics, comparative advantages and remedies of shaming sanctions, and points out that they can help community members make clever choices while selecting partners, express community senses, and reduce punishment costs.The third section points out the two main limitations of shaming sanctions. First, as socialized punishments, shaming sanctions are either invalidity or too severely. Second, they can lead to offensive sub-communities.The last section concludes, and suggests that shaming sanctions be used in great caution.