Taking punishment into your own hands: An experiment on the motivation underlying punishment

In a punishment experiment, we separate the demand for punishmentin general from a possible demand to conduct punishmentpersonally. Subjects experience an unfair split of their earnings froma real effort task and have to decide on the punishment of the personwho determines the distribution. First, it is established whether theallocator's payoff is reduced and, afterwards, subjects take part in asecond price auction for the right to (physically) carry out the actof payoff reduction. This auction only resolves who will punish, notwhether punishment takes place, so only subjects with a demand forpersonal punishment should bid.[...]