Cooperation and free riding with moral cost

Denis Phan ()

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We study social organizations withpossible coexistence at equilibrium ofcooperating individuals and pure consumers(free-riders). We investigate this polymorphicequilibrium using a game-theoretic approach anda statistical physics analysis of a simple model.The agents face a binary decision problem:whether to contribute or not to the public good,through the maximization of an additive utilitythat has two competing terms, a fixed cost forcooperating and an idiosyncratic moral cost forfree-riding proportional to the fraction ofcooperators. We study the equilibria regimes ofthis model. We show that there is a fraction ofexpected cooperators below which cooperationfails to emerge. Besides the homogeneous stableequilibria (everybody cooperates or everybodyfree-rides), it exists a solution in whichcooperators coexist with free-riders. Thispolymorphic equilibrium is a consequence of theheterogeneous (idiosyncratic) perceptions of thesocial reproval by the different individuals. Weprovide analytic results in the case of a simpledistribution of the idiosyncratic moral weights,and discuss them on the basis of concepts ofgame theory.

Keywords: ACE; cooperation; Complex Adaptative System; heretogeneous agent; neighbourhood effects; sanctions; social economics; social interactions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in Kokinov Boicho. Advances in Cognitive Economics, Proceedings of International Conference on Cognitive Economics (ICCE),, NBU Press, pp.294-304, 2005

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
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:hal:journl:halshs-00105849

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().