Cooperation and Punishment: The Individual-Level Perspective

Arbeitspapier

We explore the relationship between individuals’ disposition to cooperate and their inclination to engage in peer punishment as well as their relative importance for mitigating social dilemmas. Using a novel strategy-method approach we identify individual punishment patterns and link them with individual cooperation patterns. Classifying N = 628 subjects along these two dimensions documents that cooperation and punishment patterns are intuitively aligned for most individuals. However, the data also reveal a sizable share of free-riders that punish pro-socially and conditional cooperators that do not engage in punishment. Analyzing the interplay between types in an additional experiment, we show that pro-social punishers are more crucial for achieving cooperation than conditional cooperators. Incorporating information on punishment types explains large amounts of the between and within group variation in cooperation.

Object Details

• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CESifo Working Paper ; No. 6284

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Design of Experiments: General
• Subject: strategy method ; punishment patterns ; type classification ; conditional cooperation ; public-goods game

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Albrecht, Felix ; Kube, Sebastian ; Traxler, Christian
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo)
• (where): Munich
• (when): 2016

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/155526
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:43 AM CET