Teams Punish Less

Heike Auerswald (heike.auerswald@tu-dresden.de), Carsten Schmidt, Marcel Thum and Gaute Torsvik

No 4406, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Many decisions in politics and business are made by teams rather than by single individuals. In contrast, economic models typically assume an individual rational decision maker. A rapidly growing body of (experimental) literature investigates team decisions in different settings. We study team decisions in a public goods contribution game with a costly punishment option and compare it to the behavior of individuals in a laboratory experiment. We also consider different team decision-making rules (unanimity, majority). We find that teams contribute significantly more and punish less than individuals, regardless of the team decision rule. Overall, teams yield higher payoffs than individuals.

Keywords: group decision making; public good; experiment; punishment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H54 Q54 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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