This paper provides evidence that free riders are heavily punished even if punishment is costly and does not provide any material benefits for the punisher. The more free riders negatively deviate from the group standard the more they are punished. As a consequence, the existence of an...

We report on an experiment designed to explore whether a written expression of disapproval affects future levels of cooperation. In between two identical public goods games, participants play a mini dictator game that, depending on the treatment, either gives or does not give the recipient the...

In this paper we show that a simple model of fairness preferences explains major experimental regularities of common pool resource (CPR) experiments. The evidence indicates that in standard CPR games without communication and without sanctioning possibilities inefficient excess appropriation is...

This paper provides evidence that free riders are heavily punished even if punishment is costly and does not provide any material benefits for the punisher. The more free riders negatively deviate from the group standard the more they are punished. As a consequence, the existence of an...

While inequality in resource endowments has been shown to affect cooperation levels in groups, much of this evidence comes from studies of within-group inequality. In an online public goods experiment, we instead examine the effects of payoff-irrelevant inequality in resources between groups on...

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 contributions and punishments in a linear public good game, where group members have different sources of endowment. We compare the behavior of homogeneous groups, in which subjects are exogenously assigned the same endowments, with that of heterogeneous groups, in which half...

Previous experiments on public goods dilemmas have found that the opportunity to punish leads to higher contributions and reduces the free rider problem; however, a substantial amount of punishment is targeted on high contributors. In the experiment reported here, subjects are given the...

We test a mechanism whereby groups are formed voluntarily, through the use of voting. These groups play a public-goods game, where efficiency increases with group size (up to a limit, in one treatment). It is feasible to exclude group members, to exit one's group, or to form larger groups...

This paper compares two methods to encourage socially optimal provision of a public good. We compare the efficacy of vigilante justice, as represented by peer-to-peer punishment, to delegated policing, as represented by the “hired gun” mechanism, to deter free riding and improve group...