Trigger-happy or precisionist? On demand for monitoring in peer-based public goods provision

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Nicklisch, Andreas; Putterman, Louis; Thoni, Christian
• 署名单位: Brown University; University of Lausanne
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104429
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Public goods; Peer punishment; costly monitoring

摘要

Recent studies question whether societies can self-govern public goods dilemmas with the help of decen-tralized punishment opportunities. One important challenge is imperfect information about individuals' contributions. In laboratory experiments, imperfect information increases misdirected punishment and thereby hampers the efficacy of the punishment mechanism. A key question is thus whether those facing such a collective action dilemma would punish despite doubt if they could observe one another's actions more accurately at some cost. We find that most experimental subjects prefer to engage in costly mon-itoring before punishing, or else not to punish at all. We demonstrate a price sensitive demand for mon-itoring, a tendency of known monitoring to serve as a warning of punishment, a taste-based preference for full over partial monitoring, and positive effects of monitoring on cooperation and efficiency. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier B.V.