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 welfare....

We compare a partners condition, where the same small group of subjects plays a repeated public good game, to a strangers condition, where subjects play this game in changing group formations. From the first period onward, subjects in the partners condition contribute significantly more to the...

This paper theoretically explores the voluntary provision of a public good in a finitely repeated setting. Agents' utility is the sum of their monetary earnings and a non-material psychological component that can be interpreted as a taste for efficiency and/or fairness. An arbitrarily small...