Partners or Strangers? Cooperation, Monetary Trade, and the Choice of Scale of Interaction

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bigoni, Maria; Camera, Gabriele; Casari, Marco
• 署名单位: University of Bologna; Chapman University System; Chapman University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20170280
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 195-227
• 关键词: impersonal exchange; COORDINATION; economies; provision; money

摘要

We show that monetary exchange facilitates the transition from small to large-scale economic interactions. In an experiment, subjects chose to play an intertemporal cooperation game either in partnerships or in groups of strangers where payoffs could be higher. Theoretically, a norm of mutual support is sufficient to maximize efficiency through large-scale cooperation. Empirically, absent a monetary system, participants were reluctant to interact on a large scale; and when they did, efficiency plummeted compared to partnerships because cooperation collapsed. This failure was reversed only when a stable monetary system endogenously emerged: the institution of money mitigated strategic uncertainty problems.