Spillover Effects of Institutions on Cooperative Behavior, Preferences, and Beliefs

Florian Engl, Arno Riedl and Roberto Weber

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2021, vol. 13, issue 4, 261-99

Abstract: Most institutions are limited in scope. We study experimentally how enforcement institutions affect behavior, preferences, and beliefs beyond their direct influence over the behaviors they control. Groups play two identical public good games, with cooperation institutionally enforced in one game. Institutions generally have economically significant positive spillover effects to the unregulated game. We also observe that institutions enhance conditional cooperation preferences and beliefs about others' cooperativeness, suggesting that both factors are drivers of observed spillover effects. In additional treatments, we provide evidence for several factors, including characteristics of institutions, that enhance or limit the effectiveness and scope of spillover effects.

JEL-codes: C92 D02 D83 D91 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20180336 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E128682V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20180336.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20180336.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Spillover Effects of Institutions on Cooperative Behavior, Preferences, and Beliefs (2017)
Working Paper: Spillover Effects of Institutions on Cooperative Behavior, Preferences and Beliefs (2017)
Working Paper: Spillover Effects of Institutions on Cooperative Behavior, Preferences, and Beliefs (2017)
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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:13:y:2021:i:4:p:261-99

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/mic.20180336

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().