Teams punish less

Heike Auerswald (), Carsten Schmidt (), Marcel Thum and Gaute Torsvik
Additional contact information
Carsten Schmidt: University of Mannheim

No 08/13, Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics

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)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2013-10-18
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-exp
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://ekstern.filer.uib.no/svf/2013/08-2013_Heike ... %20punish%20less.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Teams Punish Less (2013)
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:hhs:bergec:2013_008

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers in Economics from University of Bergen, Department of Economics Institutt for økonomi, Universitetet i Bergen, Postboks 7802, 5020 Bergen, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kjell Erik Lommerud ().