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Public Goods Provision and Sanctioning in Privileged Groups

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Author Info
Ernesto Reuben ()
Arno Riedl ()

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Abstract

In public good provision, privileged groups enjoy the advantage that some of its members find it optimal to supply a positive amount of the public good. However, their inherent asymmetric nature may make the enforcement of cooperative behavior through informal sanctioning harder to accomplish. In this paper we experimentally investigate public good provision in normal and privileged groups with and without decentralized punishment. We find that compared to normal groups, privileged groups are relatively ineffective in using costly sanctions to increase everyone's contributions. Punishment is less targeted towards strong free-riders and they exhibit a weaker increase in contributions after being punished. Thus, we show that privileged groups are not as privileged as they initially seem.

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Publisher Info
Paper provided by CESifo Group Munich in its series CESifo Working Paper Series with number CESifo Working Paper No. 2063.

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Date of creation: 2007
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Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_2063

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Related research
Keywords: privileged groups; public goods; punishment; cooperation; collective action;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
D01 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Microeconomic Behavior: Underlying Principles
H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Social Norms and Social Capital; Social Networks Economic Anthropology

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

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Cited by:
(explanations, Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.)

  1. Noussair, C.N. & Tan, F., 2009. "Voting on Punishment Systems Within a Heterogeneous Group," Discussion Paper 2009-19, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
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