Impulsivity, Voluntary Cooperation, and Denunciation among Fishermen

Carina Cavalcanti and Andreas Leibbrandt

No 10-17, Monash Economics Working Papers from Monash University, Department of Economics

Abstract: Abundant laboratory evidence shows that many people incur costs to punish free-riders. In this paper, we investigate punishment in the context of fishermen who decide whether to denounce other fishermen who catch illegally small fish. Our laboratory and survey evidence suggests that the level of impulsivity plays an important role for costly punishment. Fishermen who behave more impulsive during a laboratory inter-temporal choice task report to have a higher propensity to denounce misbehavior from other fishermen. This finding suggests that impulsivity may help to explain why many people incur costs to punish free-riders. Moreover, we find that fishermen, who contribute more in a laboratory public goods experiment, report to be more likely to denounce free-riding in the field, suggesting that voluntary cooperativeness is also important to account for denunciation in the field.

Keywords: Altruistic Punishment; Impulsivity; Strong Reciprocity; Experiments. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 O33 Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2017-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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