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Sustaining cooperation in laboratory public goods experiments: a selective survey of the literature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Ananish Chaudhuri
Ananish Chaudhuri*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Auckland, 655 Owen G Glenn Building Level 6, 12 Grafton Road, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
*
e-mail: a.chaudhuri@auckland.ac.nz
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Abstract

I survey the literature post Ledyard (Handbook of Experimental Economics, ed. by J. Kagel, A. Roth, Chap. 2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995) on three related issues in linear public goods experiments: (1) conditional cooperation; (2) the role of costly monetary punishments in sustaining cooperation and (3) the sustenance of cooperation via means other than such punishments. Many participants in laboratory public goods experiments are “conditional cooperators” whose contributions to the public good are positively correlated with their beliefs about the average group contribution. Conditional cooperators are often able to sustain high contributions to the public good through costly monetary punishment of free-riders but also by other mechanisms such as expressions of disapproval, advice giving and assortative matching.

Keywords

Public goodsConditional cooperationMonetary punishmentsNon-monetary punishmentsMoral suasionSorting

JEL classification

C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior C71: Cooperative Games C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 47 - 83
Copyright
Copyright © Economic Science Association 2010

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