Public Goods With High-Powered Punishment: High Cooperation And Low Efficiency

Authors

Terence C. Burnham, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2014

Abstract

A laboratory experiment where human subjects play a repeated public goods game with high-powered punishment technology (50:1). Results on three attributes are similar to lower-powered punishment settings (e.g., 3:1): Subjects contribute almost 100 % to the public good, punishment rates are low (under 10 % of maximum), and punishment is directed more toward low contributors. In contrast to lower-powered punishment settings, however, subjects earn less money than they would have in the same setting without punishment. These results contribute to the debate about the origins and maintenance of cooperation.

Comments

This article was originally published in Journal of Bioeconomics, volume 17, issue 2, in 2014. DOI: 10.1007/s10818-014-9191-y

Recommended Citation

Burnham, T. C. (2014). "Public goods with high-powered punishment: high cooperation and low efficiency," Journal of Bioeconomics 17(2): 173-187.
DOI:10.1007/s10818-014-9191-y

Peer Reviewed

1

Copyright

The authors

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.