Effective states provide public goods by taxing their citizens and imposing penalties for non-compliance. However, accountable government requires that enough citizens are civically engaged. We study the voluntary cooperative underpinnings of the accountable state by conducting a two-level...

Reputation is a commonly cited check on opportunism in economic and social interactions. But it is often unclear what would motivate an agent to report another’s behavior when the pool of potential partners is large and it is easy enough for an aggrieved player to move on. We argue that...

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...