Public Goods Provision and Sanctioning in Privileged Groups

Ernesto Reuben and Arno Riedl

No 2916, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: In public good provision, privileged groups enjoy the advantage that some of its members find it optimal to supply a positive amount of the public good. However, their inherent asymmetric nature may make the enforcement of cooperative behavior through informal sanctioning harder to accomplish. In this paper we experimentally investigate public good provision in normal and privileged groups with and without decentralized punishment. We find that compared to normal groups, privileged groups are relatively ineffective in using costly sanctions to increase everyone's contributions. Punishment is less targeted towards strong free-riders and they exhibit a weaker increase in contributions after being punished. Thus, we show that privileged groups are not as privileged as they initially seem.

Keywords: privileged groups; public goods; punishment; cooperation; collective action (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 D01 H41 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 33 pages
Date: 2007-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-pbe and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Published - published in: Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2009, 53 (1), 72-93

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Related works:
Journal Article: Public Goods Provision and Sanctioning in Privileged Groups (2009)
Working Paper: Public Goods Provision and Sanctioning in Privileged Groups (2007)
Working Paper: Public goods provision and sanctioning in privileged groups (2007)
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