Cooperation and Punishment: The Individual-Level Perspective

34 Pages Posted: 9 Feb 2017

See all articles by Felix Albrecht

Felix Albrecht

University of Marburg

Sebastian Kube

University of Bonn; Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods

Christian Traxler

Hertie School; CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute)

Date Written: Decebmer 2016

Abstract

We explore the relationship between individuals’ disposition to cooperate and their inclination to engage in peer punishment as well as their relative importance for mitigating social dilemmas. Using a novel strategy-method approach we identify individual punishment patterns and link them with individual cooperation patterns. Classifying N = 628 subjects along these two dimensions documents that cooperation and punishment patterns are intuitively aligned for most individuals. However, the data also reveal a sizable share of free-riders that punish pro-socially and conditional cooperators that do not engage in punishment. Analyzing the interplay between types in an additional experiment, we show that pro-social punishers are more crucial for achieving cooperation than conditional cooperators. Incorporating information on punishment types explains large amounts of the between and within group variation in cooperation.

Keywords: strategy method, punishment patterns, type classification, conditional cooperation, public-goods game

JEL Classification: C900, D030

Suggested Citation

Albrecht, Felix and Kube, Sebastian and Kube, Sebastian and Traxler, Christian, Cooperation and Punishment: The Individual-Level Perspective (Decebmer 2016). CESifo Working Paper Series No. 6284, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2914207 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2914207

Felix Albrecht

University of Marburg ( email )

Universitätsstrasse 24
D-35032 Marburg, D-35032
Germany

Sebastian Kube

University of Bonn

BWL 1
Adenauerallee 24-42
Bonn, D-53012
Germany

Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods ( email )

Kurt-Schumacher-Str. 10
D-53113 Bonn, 53113
Germany

Christian Traxler (Contact Author)

Hertie School ( email )

Friedrichstrasse 180
Quartier 110
Berlin, 10117
Germany

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) ( email )

Poschingerstr. 5
Munich, DE-81679
Germany

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