Reliable institutions - i.e., institutions that live up to the norms that agents expect them to keep - foment cooperative behavior. We experimentally confirm this hypothesis in a public goods game with a salient norm that cooperation was socially demanded and corruption ought not to occur. When...

The question to what extent social environment affects how individuals govern their groups, has received no special academic attention, yet. Within the framework of a ten-period public goods experi&ment we analyse how social identity affects subjects ́choice of punishment: They may either...