The circulation of worthless objects aids cooperation. An experiment inspired by the Kula

Giuseppe Danese () and Luigi Mittone

No 1703, CEEL Working Papers from Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia

Abstract: Many anthropological records exist of apparently worthless objects used in traditional societies, often part of larger institutional arrangements that were instrumental in favoring cooperation and reducing conflict. The most famous examples of such objects are probably the Kula necklaces and armbands first described by B. Malinowski. In our experiment subjects can send a token to another participant before each round of a repeated public good game. We use as tokens a bracelet built by the participants, a piece of cardboard provided by the experimenter, and an object brought from home by the participants. Contributions to the public good in the treatments featuring a bracelet and cardboard are significantly higher than in a control study. The home object was not equally useful in increasing contributions. Notwithstanding the cheap talk nature of the decision to send the token, both sending and receiving the token are associated with a significant increase in contributions.

Keywords: Kula; worthless objects; cooperation; public goods games; signaling; kitoum (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D01 H40 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cdm, nep-exp and nep-hpe
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:trn:utwpce:1703

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