The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia

Simon Gaechter () and Benedikt Herrmann ()
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Simon Gaechter: University of Nottingham
Benedikt Herrmann: University of Nottingham
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Gächter ()

No 2007-11, Discussion Papers from The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham

Abstract: We report evidence from public goods experiments with and without punishment which we conducted in Russia with 566 urban and rural participants of young and mature age cohorts. Russia is interesting for studying voluntary cooperation because of its long history of collectivism, and a huge urban-rural gap. In contrast to previous experiments we find no cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. An important reason is that there is substantial punishment of high contributors in all four subject pools. Thus, punishment can also undermine the scope for self-governance in the sense of high levels of voluntary cooperation that are sustained by sanctioning free riders only.

Keywords: social norms; free riding; misdirected punishment; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H41 C91 D23 C72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-cis, nep-exp, nep-gth, nep-pbe, nep-soc and nep-tra
Date: 2007-11
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Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cdx:dpaper:2007-11

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