“The Duel of Honor: Screening For Unobservable Social Capital”, 2006-03-27 ():
The duel of honor was a highly ritualized violent activity practiced (mostly) by aristocrats from about 1500–1900. The duel of honor was held in private, was attended by seconds and other members of society, was illegal, and often resulted from trivial incidents. Duels were fought according to strict codes, their lethality fell over time, and certain members of society were not allowed to duel.
We argue dueling functioned as a screen for unobservable investments in social capital. Social capital was used during this period to support political transactions in an age when high civil service appointments were made through patronage.
The screening hypothesis explains the puzzling features of the duel of honor, its rise and fall over time and locations, and the differences between European and American duels.
…The duel of honor provided the answer to this question: the duel was designed to screen for a critical level of social capital among the aristocracy seeking patronage appointments. Those individuals who rejected the duel demonstrated their social capital was too low, and they could not be trusted. Those who accepted the duel demonstrated sufficient social capita land were allowed to participate in aristocratic exchanges. Thus, the duel was not a substitute for reputation-based exchange; it was an institutional support necessary in light of the unobservability of social capital. Our theory is similar in spirit to the religious club literature explanations of sectarian sacrifices. 1992 and 2000, for example, argue that religious sacrifices help eliminate free-riding within religious groups that provide mutual insurance for their members. Our model is also similar to Milgrom et al 199034ya, where law merchants and private commercial courts were designed to spread the word about who was honest among the traders participating in the court. In those cases and ours, an institutional device was used to indicate a prior investment encompassing a public good component.
…Dueling, of course, had costs: it excluded large numbers of individuals from civil service; it often resulted in death or serious injury to talented people; it created an incentive for individuals to invest in acquiring dueling skills; and, although measures existed to mitigate it, at the margin cheating at duels took place. Hence, when patronage was ultimately replaced by a professional bureaucracy based on measured merit, dueling ceased to be practiced.