Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/89600 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Nota di Lavoro No. 80.2013
Publisher: 
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM), Milano
Abstract: 
Experimental and observational studies have highlighted the importance of agents being conditionally cooperative when facing a social dilemma. We formalize this mechanism in a theoretical model that portrays a small community having joint access to a common pool resource. The diffusion of norms of cooperation takes place via interpersonal relations, while individual agents face the temptation of higher profits by overexploiting the resource. Agents remain conditionally cooperative, unless other individuals are misbehaving already. We can observe a bubble of conditional cooperators slowly building up followed by a sudden burst, which means that a transition from a cooperative social norm to non-cooperation occurs. Interestingly, in some parameter regions alternative stable states and limit cycles arise. The latter implies that the same community goes through such a transition repeatedly over long time spans – history thus repeats itself in the form of the creation and erosion of social capital.
Subjects: 
Common Pool Resource
Conditional Cooperators
Social-Ecological Complexity
Social Capital
Social Norms
JEL: 
C73
D70
D64
Q20
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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