Understanding Cooperation in an Intertemporal Context

Felix Kölle and Thomas Lauer

No 46, ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany

Abstract: In today's highly complex economic environment, cooperation among individuals is crucial for organizational and societal success. Most of the situations in which cooperation is required involve costly efforts whose consequences play out over time. Here, we provide a systematic and comprehensive analysis of cooperation in an intertemporal context. In a first study, we show that cooperation is substantially reduced when the benefits of cooperation are shifted towards the future, and increased when the costs are delayed. An analysis of the underlying behavioral mechanisms reveals that the change in cooperation can be explained by (i) a shift in the beliefs about others' actions, (ii) a shift in the willingness to conditionally cooperate, and (iii) an individual's degree of impatience. We further demonstrate that social norms are unaffected by the timing of consequences, indicating that the shifts in conditional cooperation are due to a change in norm compliance rather than the norm itself. In a second study, we demonstrate that the amount of economic incentives needed to close the cooperation gap are substantial, thereby providing policy makers with a useful estimate for conducting cost-benefit analyses.

Keywords: Cooperation; time preferences; incentives; social norms; experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D63 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 79 pages
Date: 2020-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econtribute.de/RePEc/ajk/ajkdps/ECONtribute_046_2020.pdf First version, 2020 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Understanding Cooperation in an Intertemporal Context (2024)
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:ajk:ajkdps:046

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ECONtribute Discussion Papers Series from University of Bonn and University of Cologne, Germany Niebuhrstrasse 5, 53113 Bonn, Germany.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ECONtribute Office ().