Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/80228 
Year of Publication: 
2004
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2004-12
Publisher: 
Brown University, Department of Economics, Providence, RI
Abstract: 
The fact that many people take it upon themselves to impose costly punishment on free riders helps to explain why collective action sometimes succeeds despite the prediction of received theory. But while individually imposed sanctions lead to higher contributions in public goods experiments, there is usually little or no net efficiency gain from them, because punishment is costly and at times misdirected. We document the frequency and probable causes of punishment of high contributors in several recent studies, and we report a new experiment which shows that introducing higher-order punishment opportunities offer a partial solution to the problem, but also reveal the deep-seatedness of retaliatory tendencies.
Subjects: 
Public goods
collective action
experiment
punishment
demand
JEL: 
C91
H41
D71
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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