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Teams Do Inflict Costly Third-Party Punishment as Individuals Do: Experimental Evidence

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  • Kenju Kamei

    (Department of Economics and Finance, Durham University Business School, Mill Hill Lane, Durham DH1 3LB, UK)

Abstract

Initiated by the seminal work of Fehr and Fischbacher (Evolution and Human Behavior (2004)), a large body of research has shown that people often take punitive actions towards norm violators even when they are not directly involved in transactions. This paper shows in an experimental setting that this behavioral finding extends to a situation where a pair of individuals jointly decides how strong a third-party punishment to impose. It also shows that this punishment behavior is robust to the size of social distance within pairs. These results lend useful insight since decisions in our everyday lives and also in courts are often made by teams.

Suggested Citation

  • Kenju Kamei, 2021. "Teams Do Inflict Costly Third-Party Punishment as Individuals Do: Experimental Evidence," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-11, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jgames:v:12:y:2021:i:1:p:22-:d:509478
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Im, Changkuk & Lee, Jinkwon, 2022. "On the fragility of third-party punishment: The context effect of a dominated risky investment option," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 98(C).
    2. Kamei, Kenju & Tabero, Katy, 2021. "The Individual-Team Discontinuity Effect on Institutional Choices: Experimental Evidence in Voluntary Public Goods Provision," MPRA Paper 112106, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Kenju Kamei & Smriti Sharma & Matthew J. Walker, 2023. "Sanction Enforcement among Third Parties:New Experimental Evidence from Two Societies," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2023-010, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.

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