IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/sus/susewp/1720.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Unhappy is the land without symbols - Group symbols in infinitely repeated public good games

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Potoms

    (Department of Economics, University of Sussex)

  • Tom Truyts

    (CEREC, Saint-Louis University)

Abstract

How are group symbols (e.g. a flag, Muslim veil, clothing style) helpful in sustaining cooperation and social norms? We study the role of symbols in an infinitely repeated public goods game with random matching, endogenous partnership termination, limited information flows and endogenous symbol choice. We characterize an efficiently segregating equilbrium, in which players only cooperate with others bearing the same symbol. Players bearing a scarcer symbol face a longer expected search time to find a cooperative partner upon partnership termination, and can therefore sustain higher levels of cooperation. We compare this equilibrium to other equilibria in terms of Pareto dominance and robustness to (some form of) bilateral renegotiation.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Potoms & Tom Truyts, 2020. "Unhappy is the land without symbols - Group symbols in infinitely repeated public good games," Working Paper Series 1720, Department of Economics, University of Sussex Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:sus:susewp:1720
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=econ-wps-17-2020.pdf&site=24
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paola Manzini & Abdolkarim Sadrieh & Nicolaas J. Vriend, 2009. "On Smiles, Winks and Handshakes as Coordination Devices," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 119(537), pages 826-854, April.
    2. Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 2010. "Symbolic values, occupational choice, and economic development," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 237-251, February.
    3. Larry Samuelson & George J. Mailath & Avner Shaked, 2000. "Endogenous Inequality in Integrated Labor Markets with Two-Sided Search," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(1), pages 46-72, March.
    4. Glenn Ellison, 1994. "Cooperation in the Prisoner's Dilemma with Anonymous Random Matching," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(3), pages 567-588.
    5. Jason A. Aimone & Laurence R. Iannaccone & Michael D. Makowsky & Jared Rubin, 2013. "Endogenous Group Formation via Unproductive Costs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 80(4), pages 1215-1236.
    6. Takahashi, Satoru, 2010. "Community enforcement when players observe partners' past play," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 42-62, January.
    7. Hirofumi Shimizu, 2011. "Social cohesion and self-sacrificing behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 149(3), pages 427-440, December.
    8. Yuval Heller & Erik Mohlin, 2018. "Observations on Cooperation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 2253-2282.
    9. Deb, Joyee & Gonzalez-Diaz, Julio, 2019. "Enforcing social norms: Trust-building and community enforcement," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(4), November.
    10. Colleen E. H. Berndt, 2007. "Hostile Territory: High‐Tension Religion and the Jewish Peddler," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 66(5), pages 1005-1027, November.
    11. Corneo, Giacomo & Jeanne, Olivier, 2009. "A theory of tolerance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(5-6), pages 691-702, June.
    12. Okuno-Fujiwara Masahiro & Postlewaite Andrew, 1995. "Social Norms and Random Matching Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 79-109, April.
    13. Sandler, Todd & Tschirhart, John, 1997. "Club Theory: Thirty Years Later," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 93(3-4), pages 335-355, December.
    14. Parikshit Ghosh & Debraj Ray, 1996. "Cooperation in Community Interaction Without Information Flows," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(3), pages 491-519.
    15. Watson, Joel, 1999. "Starting Small and Renegotiation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 52-90, March.
    16. James P. Choy, 2018. "Social Division with Endogenous Hierarchy," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(615), pages 2711-2742, November.
    17. Fujiwara-Greve, Takako & Okuno-Fujiwara, Masahiro & Suzuki, Nobue, 2012. "Voluntarily separable repeated Prisonerʼs Dilemma with reference letters," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 504-516.
    18. Takako Fujiwara-Greve & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara, 2009. "Voluntarily Separable Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(3), pages 993-1021.
    19. Greif, Avner, 1993. "Contract Enforceability and Economic Institutions in Early Trade: the Maghribi Traders' Coalition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(3), pages 525-548, June.
    20. Jan Eeckhout, 2006. "Minorities and Endogenous Segregation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 73(1), pages 31-53.
    21. Iannaccone, Laurence R, 1992. "Sacrifice and Stigma: Reducing Free-Riding in Cults, Communes, and Other Collectives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(2), pages 271-291, April.
    22. Schumacher, Heiner, 2013. "Imitating cooperation and the formation of long-term relationships," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(1), pages 409-417.
    23. Michihiro Kandori, 1992. "Social Norms and Community Enforcement," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 59(1), pages 63-80.
    24. Marcin P?ski & Bal?zs Szentes, 2013. "Spontaneous Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(6), pages 2412-2436, October.
    25. Kranton, Rachel E, 1996. "The Formation of Cooperative Relationships," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(1), pages 214-233, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Filip Vesely & Chun-Lei Yang, 2013. "On Optimal Social Convention in Voluntary Continuation Prisoner's Dilemma Games," CESifo Working Paper Series 4553, CESifo.
    2. Joyee Deb & Takuo Sugaya & Alexander Wolitzky, 2020. "The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games With Anonymous Random Matching," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(3), pages 917-964, May.
    3. Jan Eeckhout, "undated". "Competing Norms of Cooperation," Penn CARESS Working Papers fa8d3cedc3b97259070110325, Penn Economics Department.
    4. Harbaugh, Rick & To, Ted, 2014. "Opportunistic discrimination," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 192-204.
    5. Fujiwara-Greve, Takako & Okuno-Fujiwara, Masahiro & Suzuki, Nobue, 2012. "Voluntarily separable repeated Prisonerʼs Dilemma with reference letters," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 504-516.
    6. Rafael Rob & Huanxing Yang, 2010. "Long-term relationships as safeguards," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 43(2), pages 143-166, May.
    7. Takako Fujiwara-Greve & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara & Nobue Suzuki, 2015. "Efficiency may improve when defectors exist," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 60(3), pages 423-460, November.
    8. Yuval Heller & Erik Mohlin, 2018. "Observations on Cooperation," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 85(4), pages 2253-2282.
    9. Pin, Paolo & Rogers, Brian W., 2015. "Cooperation, punishment and immigration," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 72-101.
    10. Yu Awaya & Hiroki Fukai & Makoto Watanabe, 2017. "A Model of Collateral," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 17-098/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    11. Felipe Balmaceda, 2004. "Network Formation and Cooperation," Econometric Society 2004 Latin American Meetings 208, Econometric Society.
    12. Artyom Jelnov & Yair Tauman & Chang Zhao, 2021. "Stag Hunt with unknown outside options," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(1), pages 303-335, July.
    13. Takako Fujiwara-Greve & Masahiro Okuno-Fujiwara, 2013. "Diverse Behavior Patterns in a Symmetric Society with Voluntary Partnerships," Working Papers e062, Tokyo Center for Economic Research.
    14. W. Bentley MacLeod, 2006. "Reputations, Relationships and the Enforcement of Incomplete Contracts," CESifo Working Paper Series 1730, CESifo.
    15. Xie, Huan & Lee, Yong-Ju, 2012. "Social norms and trust among strangers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 548-555.
    16. Rauch, James E. & Watson, Joel, 2003. "Starting small in an unfamiliar environment," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(7), pages 1021-1042, September.
    17. Moller, Marc, 2005. "Optimal partnership in a repeated prisoner's dilemma," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 88(1), pages 13-19, July.
    18. Susan Athey & Emilio Calvano & Saumitra Jha, 2016. "A Theory of Community Formation and Social Hierarchy," CSEF Working Papers 451, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    19. Heller, Yuval & Mohlin, Erik, 2015. "Stable Observable Behavior," MPRA Paper 63013, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Bodoh-Creed, Aaron L., 2019. "Endogenous institutional selection, building trust, and economic growth," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 169-176.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Endogenous segregation; repeated games; random matching; public goods games;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sus:susewp:1720. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: University of Sussex Business School Communications Team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecsusuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.