Does the Reliability of Institutions Affect Public Good Contributions? Evidence from a Laboratory Experiment

Martin Fochmann, Bjoern Jahnke and Andreas Wagener

Hannover Economic Papers (HEP) from Leibniz Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät

Abstract: Reliable institutions - i.e., institutions that live up to the norms that agents expect them to keep - foment cooperative behavior. We experimentally confirm this hypothesis in a public goods game with a salient norm that cooperation was socially demanded and corruption ought not to occur. When nevertheless corruption attempts came up, groups that were told that "the system" had fended off the attempts made considerably higher contributions to the public good than groups that only learned that the attempt did not affect their payoffs or that were not at all exposed to corruption.

Keywords: Public goods; Experiment; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A13 C91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 46 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-hpe and nep-soc
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http://diskussionspapiere.wiwi.uni-hannover.de/pdf_bib/dp-570.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does the reliability of institutions affect public good contributions? Evidence from a laboratory experiment (2019)
Working Paper: Does the reliability of institutions affect public good contributions? Evidence from a laboratory experiment (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:han:dpaper:dp-570

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