Who to punish? Individual decisions and majority rule in mitigating the free rider problem

Arhan S. Ertan (), Talbot Page and Louis Putterman ()

European Economic Review, 2009, vol. 53, issue 5, pages 495-511

Abstract: We study a voluntary contributions mechanism in which punishment may be allowed, depending on subjects' voted rules. We found that out of 160 group votes, even when groups had no prior experience with unrestricted punishment, no group ever voted to allow unrestricted punishment and no group ever allowed punishment of high contributors. Over a series of votes and periods of learning we found a distinct reluctance to allow any punishment at the beginning, with a gradual but clear evolution toward allowing punishment of low contributors. And groups allowing punishment of only low contributors achieved levels of cooperation and efficiency that are among the highest in the literature on social dilemmas.

Keywords: Public; goods; Collective; action; Punishment; Voting; Institutions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V64 ... 3a5c67cee800d719b984
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:53:y:2009:i:5:p:495-511

Access Statistics for this article

European Economic Review is edited by G. A. Pfann, Z. Eckstein, E. Gal-Or, T. Gylfason and J. Von Hagen

More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier
Series data maintained by Heidi Boesdal ().