Considerable experimental evidence shows that although costly peer-punishment enhances cooperation in repeated public …-good games, heavy punishment in early rounds leads to average period payoffs below the non-cooperative equilibrium benchmark. In … fall prey to a poverty trap or, to avoid this, abstain from punishment altogether. We show that neither is the case …

We use a laboratory experiment to test the impacts of uncertainty, the magnitude of fines and aversion against making …

purporting to show robust and precise estimates of a substantial deterrent effect of capital punishment. We assess the various …

able to emerge to internalize the externalities that caused the private system to generate too little deterrence. The model …

) generally find that the optimal penalty structure is either flat or declining. We experimentally test a two-stage theoretical … model that predicts decreasing penalty structures will yield greater deterrence than increasing penalty structures. We find … for any given decision, being in a decreasing fine structure has a significant effect on deterrence. …