Information-sensitive Leviathans

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Nicklisch, Andreas; Grechenig, Kristoffel; Thoeni, Christian
• 署名单位: Max Planck Society; University of Lausanne
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2016.09.008
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 1-13
• 关键词: Centralized sanctions; COOPERATION; experiment; endogenous institutions

摘要

We study information conditions under which individuals are willing to delegate their sanctioning power to a central authority. We design a public goods game in which players can move between institutional environments, and we vary the observability of others' contributions. We find that the relative popularity of centralized sanctioning crucially depends on the interaction between the observability of the cooperation of others and the absence of punishment.targeted at cooperative individuals. While central institutions do not outperform decentralized sanctions under perfect information, large parts of the population are attracted by central institutions that rarely punish cooperative individuals in environments with limited observability. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.