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The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia

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Author Info

  • Simon Gaechter

    () (University of Nottingham)

  • Benedikt Herrmann

    () (University of Nottingham)

Abstract

We report evidence from public goods experiments with and without punishment which we conducted in Russia with 566 urban and rural participants of young and mature age cohorts. Russia is interesting for studying voluntary cooperation because of its long history of collectivism, and a huge urban-rural gap. In contrast to previous experiments we find no cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. An important reason is that there is substantial punishment of high contributors in all four subject pools. Thus, punishment can also undermine the scope for self-governance in the sense of high levels of voluntary cooperation that are sustained by sanctioning free riders only.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham in its series Discussion Papers with number 2007-11.

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Date of creation: Nov 2007
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Handle: RePEc:not:notcdx:2007-11

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Fax: (0115) 951 4159
Web page: http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/economics/cedex/
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Keywords: social norms; free riding; misdirected punishment; experiments;

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References

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Cited by:
  1. Tore Ellingsen & Benedikt Herrmann & Martin A. Nowak & David G. Rand & Corina E. Tarnita, 2012. "Civic Capital in Two Cultures: The Nature of Cooperation in Romania and USA," CESifo Working Paper Series 4042, CESifo Group Munich.
  2. Akay, Alpaslan & Karabulut, Gökhan & Martinsson, Peter, 2011. "The Effect of Religion on Cooperation and Altruistic Punishment: Experimental Evidence from Public Goods Experiments," IZA Discussion Papers 6179, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA).
  3. Uwe Dulleck & Jonas Fooken & Yumei He, 2012. "Public Policy and Individual Labor Market Discrimination: An Artefactual Field Experiment in China," QuBE Working Papers 002, QUT Business School.
  4. Gioia de Melo & Matías Piaggio, 2012. "The perils of peer punishment. Evidence from a common pool resource framed field experiment," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 12-16, Instituto de Economia - IECON.
  5. Daniele Nosenzo & Martin Sefton, 2012. "Promoting Cooperation: the Distribution of Reward and Punishment Power," Discussion Papers 2012-08, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.

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