The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the...

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of...

Introducing a threshold in the sense of a minimal project size transforms a public goods game with an inefficient equilibrium into a coordination game with a set of Pareto-superior equilibria. Thresholds may therefore improve efficiency in the voluntary provision of public goods. In our one-shot...

The Kyoto Protocol allows international emissions trading, which could take place in three different forms: government, permit, or credit trading. Which trading system is chosen is likely to depend on the preferences of several interest groups. In this paper, we give empirical evidence on the...

Which shape is market competition likely to exhibit? This question is addressed in the present paper, where firms can choose whether to act as quantity or price setters, whether to move early or delay as long as possible at the market stage and finally whether to be entrepreneurial or...

The paper studies in a simple, Downsian model of political competition how the private provision of public goods is affected when it is embedded in a system of democracy and redistributive taxation. Results show that the positive effect of inequality on public goods production, which Olson...

This paper experimentally explores how the enforcement of cooperative behavior in a social dilemma is facilitated through institutional as well as emotional mechanisms. Recent studies emphasize the importance of anger and its role in motivating individuals to punish free riders. However, we find...

We study pure redistribution as a device to increase cooperation and efficiency in the provision of public goods. Experimental subjects play a two-stage game. The first stage is the standard linear public goods game. In the second stage, subjects can redistribute payoffs among other subjects in...

In this paper, we study the effectiveness of intergroup competition in promoting cooperative behavior. We focus on intergroup competition that is non-rival in the sense that everyone can be a winner. This type of competition does not give groups an incentive to outcompete others. However, in...

The sanctioning of norm-violating behavior by an effective formal authority is an efficient solution for social dilemmas. It is in the self-interest of voters and is often favorably contrasted with letting citizens take punishment into their own hands. Allowing informal sanctions, by contrast,...