Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes: An Experiment

Jean-Robert Tyran, Louis Putterman, Kenju Kamei

Publications: Working paper

Abstract

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.
Original languageEnglish
PublisherDepartment of Economics, Brown University
Number of pages41
Publication statusPublished - 2010

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

  • 502047 Economic theory

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Public Goods and Voting on Formal Sanction Schemes: An Experiment'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this