How can we maximize the common good? This is a central organizing question of public policy design, across political parties and ideologies. The answer typically involves the provisioning of public goods such as fresh air, national defense, and knowledge. Public goods are costly to produce but...

This paper studies how the existence of counter-punishment opportunities affects cooperation and welfare when agents face a social dilemma. Using a public-good game we find that under the threat of counter-punishment cooperators are less willing to punish free-riders. As a result, under both...