Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/34545 
Year of Publication: 
2007
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 2916
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
In public good provision, privileged groups enjoy the advantage that some of its members find it optimal to supply a positive amount of the public good. However, their inherent asymmetric nature may make the enforcement of cooperative behavior through informal sanctioning harder to accomplish. In this paper we experimentally investigate public good provision in normal and privileged groups with and without decentralized punishment. We find that compared to normal groups, privileged groups are relatively ineffective in using costly sanctions to increase everyone's contributions. Punishment is less targeted towards strong free-riders and they exhibit a weaker increase in contributions after being punished. Thus, we show that privileged groups are not as privileged as they initially seem.
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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