The coordination value of monetary exchange: Experimental evidence

Gabriele Camera and Marco Casari

Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna

Abstract: Under what conditions can cooperation be sustained in a network of strangers? Here we study the role of institutions and uncover a new behavioral foundation for the use of monetary systems. In an experiment, anonymous subjects could cooperate or defect in bilateral random encounters. This sequence of encounters was indefinite; hence multiple equilibria were possible, including full intertemporal cooperation supported by a social norm based on community punishment of defectors. We report that such social norm did not emerge. Instead, the availability of intrinsically worthless tokens favored the coordination on intertemporal cooperation in ways that networks of strangers were unable to achieve through social norms.

JEL-codes: C70 C90 D80 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cba, nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-net and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://amsacta.unibo.it/4486/1/WP754.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The Coordination Value of Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence (2014)
Working Paper: The Coordination Value of Monetary Exchange: Experimental Evidence (2010)
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:bol:bodewp:wp754

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna ().