Institutional endogeneity and third-party punishment in social dilemmas

Arbeitspapier

This paper studies experimentally how the endogeneity of sanctioning institutions affects the severity of punishment in social dilemmas. We allow individuals to vote on the introduction of third-party-administered sanctions, and compare situations in which the adoption of this institution is endogenously decided via majority voting to situations in which it is exogenously imposed by the experimenter. Our experimental design addresses the self-selection and signaling effects that arise when subjects can vote on the institutional setting. We find that punishment is significantly higher when the sanctioning institution is exogenous, which can be explained by a difference in the effectiveness of punishment. Subjects respond to punishment more strongly when the sanctioning institution is endogenously chosen. As a result, a given cooperation level can be reached through milder punishment when third-party sanctions are endogenous. However, overall efficiency does not differ across the two settings as the stricter punishment implemented in the exogenous one sustains high cooperation as subjects interact repeatedly.

Angaben zum Objekt

• Sprache: Englisch

Verweise und Beziehungen

• Erschienen in: Series: Preprints of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ; No. 2016/6

Klassifikation und Themen

• Klassifikation: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: Laboratory, Group Behavior ; Institutions: Design, Formation, Operations, and Impact ; Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior ; Public Goods
• Thema: endogeneity ; third-party punishment ; voting ; institutions ; social dilemma ; public good

Beteiligte, Orts- und Zeitangaben

• Ereignis: Geistige Schöpfung
• (wer): Marcin, Isabel ; Robalo, Pedro ; Tausch, Franziska
• Ereignis: Veröffentlichung
• (wer): Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods
• (wo): Bonn
• (wann): 2016

Weitere Informationen

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/144910
• Letzte Aktualisierung: 10.03.2025, 11:42 MEZ