The Eleventh Commandment: Punish Free Riders – Reason Magazine
Posted: December 1, 2010 Filed under: Cooperation, Religion, Uncategorized Leave a comment »http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/30/the-eleventh-commandment-punis
Unobserved punishment supports cooperation
Posted: January 20, 2010 Filed under: Cooperation, Game Theory, Punishment Leave a comment »Abstract
Costly punishment can facilitate cooperation in public-goods games, as human subjects will incur costs to punish non-cooperators even in settings where it is unlikely that they will face the same opponents again. Understanding when and why it occurs is important both for the design of economic institutions and for modeling the evolution of cooperation. Our experiment shows that subjects will engage in costly punishment even when it will not be observed until the end of the session, which supports the view that agents enjoy punishment. Moreover, players continue to cooperate when punishment is unobserved, perhaps because they (correctly) anticipate that shirkers will be punished: Fear of punishment can be as effective at promoting contributions as punishment itself.
“Do the Right Thing:” The Effects of Moral Suasion on Cooperation
Posted: December 7, 2009 Filed under: Cooperation, Morals, Religion Leave a comment »“The use of moral appeals to affect the behavior of others is pervasive (from the pulpit to ethics classes) but little is known about the effects of moral suasion on behavior. In a series of experiments we study whether moral suasion affects behavior in voluntary contribution games and mechanisms by which behavior is altered. We find that observing a message with a moral standard according to the golden rule or, alternatively, utilitarian philosophy, results in a significant but transitory increase in contributions above the levels observed for subjects that did not receive a message or received a message that advised them to contribute without a moral rationale. When players have the option of punishing each other after the contribution stage the effect of the moral messages on contributions becomes persistent: punishments and moral messages interact to sustain cooperation. We investigate the mechanism through which moral suasion operates and find it to involve both expectation- and preference-shifting effects. These results suggest that the use of moral appeals can be an effective way of promoting cooperation.”
http://papers.nber.org/papers/w15559#fromrss
The Ultimate Chain Letter
Posted: September 18, 2009 Filed under: Capitalism, Cooperation, Economics, Free markets, Trust, Uncategorized Leave a comment »Sent to you via Google Reader
The Ultimate Chain Letter
Kurt Bouwhuis, Mackinac Center Intern
Here is a great essay that is a bit more lengthy than most of my posts that is definately worth your time to read!
By: Russ Roberts
The other day I had to get some important tax receipts to my accountant. He’s in St. Louis, it [...]
Daniel J. SmithSent Via Mobile Phone
