Unobserved punishment supports cooperation
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Pathak_Unobserved punishment.pdf
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106.96 KB
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Adobe PDF
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02035d629b4d41e0ad3a86bf8d7beac9
Author(s)
Fudenberg, Drew
Pathak, Parag
Date Issued
October 2009
Journal
Journal of Public Economics
Publisher
Elsevier
Citation
Fudenberg, Drew, and Parag A. Pathak. “Unobserved punishment supports cooperation.” Journal of Public Economics 94.1-2 (2010): 78-86.
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
Costly punishment can facilitate cooperation in public-goods games, as human subjects will incur costs to punish non-cooperators even in settings where it is unlikely that they will face the same opponents again. Understanding when and why it occurs is important both for the design of economic institutions and for modeling the evolution of cooperation. Our experiment shows that subjects will engage in costly punishment even when it will not be observed until the end of the session, which supports the view that agents enjoy punishment. Moreover, players continue to cooperate when punishment is unobserved, perhaps because they (correctly) anticipate that shirkers will be punished: Fear of punishment can be as effective at promoting contributions as punishment itself.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2009.10.007
