Economists have a long tradition in identifying the evolution of cooperation in large, unstructured societies as a puzzle. We suggest a new explanation for cooperation which avoids restrictions of most previous attempts. Our explanation deals with the role of internalized norms for cooperation...

This paper shows how conflicting normative views of fair contribution rules can be used to design sequential contribution mechanisms to foster human cooperation in heterogeneous populations. Our model predicts that a sequential mechanism which solicits contributions first from wealthy actors...