Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes: An Experiment

TY - UNPB

T1 - Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes

T2 - An Experiment

AU - Putterman, Louis

AU - Tyran, Jean-Robert

AU - Kamei, Kenju

N1 - JEL classification: C91, C92, D71, D72, H41

PY - 2010

Y1 - 2010

N2 - The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of exacerbating the free-rider problem, depending on parameter settings. Most groups quickly learned to choose parameters inducing efficient outcomes. But despite uniform money payoffs implying common interest in those parameters, voting patterns suggest significant influence of cooperative orientation, political attitudes, and of gender and intelligence.

AB - The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support public goods provision has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable both of resolving and of exacerbating the free-rider problem, depending on parameter settings. Most groups quickly learned to choose parameters inducing efficient outcomes. But despite uniform money payoffs implying common interest in those parameters, voting patterns suggest significant influence of cooperative orientation, political attitudes, and of gender and intelligence.

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - voluntary contribution

KW - penalty

KW - public good

M3 - Working paper

BT - Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes

PB - Department of Economics, University of Copenhagen

ER -