We investigate whether peer punishment is an efficient mechanism for enforcing cooperation in an experiment with a long time horizon. Previous evidence suggests that the costs of peer punishment can be outweighed by the benefits of higher cooperation, if (i) there is a sufficiently long time...

We elicit human conditional punishment types by conducting experiments. We find that their punishment decisions to an individual are on average significantly positively proportional to other members’ punishment decisions to that individual.

We use a public-good experiment to analyze behavior in a decentralized asymmetric punishment institution. The institution is asymmetric in the sense that players differ in the effectiveness of their punishment. At the aggregate level, we observe remarkable similarities between outcomes in...

This study presents experimental evidence on the effectiveness of alternative institutional arrangements designed to allow providers of public good services to be subsidized by non-providers. The decision setting is a repeated linear public good game with two groups, insiders and outsiders....

In a step-level public-good experiment, we investigate how the order of moves (simultaneous vs. sequential) and the number of step levels (one vs. two) affects public-good provision in a two-player game. We find that the sequential order of moves significantly improves public-good provision and...

This paper presents experimental evidence from a simple three-person game showing that many individuals are willing to avenge third-party punishment in one-shot interactions. The threat of counter-punishment has a large negative effect on the willingness of third parties to punish selfish...

This paper deals with the effects of introducing adequate punishment opportunities in experiments with public goods. Decentralized punishment means that the contributing subjects have a possibility to sanction free riders without the intervention of an external authority. The very first...

Cooperation is central to human societies. Yet relatively little is known about the cognitive underpinnings of cooperative decision-making. Does cooperation require deliberate self-restraint? Or is spontaneous prosociality reined in by calculating self-interest? Here we present a theory of why...

The opportunity to tell a white lie (i.e., a lie that benefits another person) generates a moral conflict between two opposite moral dictates, one pushing towards telling always the truth and the other pushing towards helping others. Here we study how people resolve this moral conflict. What...