Syrian Civil War Victims Trust Each Other, but Punish When and Whomever They Can

Nora El-Bialy, Elisa Fraile Aranda, Andreas Nicklisch, Lamis Saleh and Stefan Voigt

No 40, ILE Working Paper Series from University of Hamburg, Institute of Law and Economics

Abstract: The civil war in Syria has been raging since 2011. We ask whether civil war experience affects voluntary cooperation and its coordination by means of peer punishment. To answer that question, we ran experiments with Syrians and Jordanians, and use a victimization index to measure the individual war exposure among Syrians. Despite being more trusting, severely victimized Syrians tend to be less cooperative when subsequent peer punishment is possible. Severely victimized participants punish whenever possible, not distinguishing between their opponent s decisions. Our findings show that experiencing extreme violence deteriorates the adequate use of sanctioning mechanisms.

Keywords: Civil war; Victimization; Trust; Cooperation; Punishment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C93 D91 O15 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ara, nep-exp and nep-soc
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:ilewps:40

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