TY - JOUR
T1 - Punishment and counter-punishment in public good games
T2 - Can we really govern ourselves?
AU - Nikiforakis, Nikos
N1 - Funding Information:
I am indebted to Hans Normann, Dirk Engelmann and Simon Gächter for their continuous support and comments. I wish to thank two anonymous referees for their helpful and detailed comments, as well as Dan Anderberg, Andres Carvajal, Marco Casari, Mick Coelli, John Creedy, Ernst Fehr, Herbert Gintis, Liana Jacobi, Johan Lagerlof, Manisha Shah, Martin Sefton, Anne van den Nouweland, Jonathan Wadsworth and Brian Wallace all of whom gracefully shared some of their wisdom and limited time and helped improve this paper. The paper also benefited from comments at the International ESA Meeting in Amsterdam (June 2004), the North American ESA Meeting in Tucson (November 2004) and the International Meeting on Experimental Economics in Cordoba (December 2004). I gratefully acknowledge support from Leverhulme (project F/07537/S) and ESRC (project RES-000-22-0948).
PY - 2008/2
Y1 - 2008/2
N2 - A number of experimental studies have shown that the opportunity to punish anti-social behavior increases cooperation levels when agents face a social dilemma. Using a public good experiment, I show that in the presence of counter-punishment opportunities cooperators are less willing to punish free riders. As a result, cooperation breaks down and groups have lower earnings in comparison to a treatment without punishments where free riding is predominant. Approximately one quarter of all punishments are retaliated. Counter-punishments appear to be driven partly by strategic considerations and partly by a desire to reciprocate punishments.
AB - A number of experimental studies have shown that the opportunity to punish anti-social behavior increases cooperation levels when agents face a social dilemma. Using a public good experiment, I show that in the presence of counter-punishment opportunities cooperators are less willing to punish free riders. As a result, cooperation breaks down and groups have lower earnings in comparison to a treatment without punishments where free riding is predominant. Approximately one quarter of all punishments are retaliated. Counter-punishments appear to be driven partly by strategic considerations and partly by a desire to reciprocate punishments.
KW - Counter-punishment
KW - Decentralized punishment
KW - Experimental economics
KW - Public goods
KW - Revenge
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U2 - 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.04.008
DO - 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.04.008
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:37549025371
VL - 92
SP - 91
EP - 112
JO - Journal of Public Economics
JF - Journal of Public Economics
SN - 0047-2727
IS - 1-2
ER -