IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ehl/lserod/119490.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the coevolution of cooperation and social institutions

Author

Listed:
  • Salazar Restrepo, Verónica
  • Szentes, Balázs

Abstract

This paper examines an environment inhabited by self-interested individuals and unconditional cooperators. The individuals are randomly paired and engage in the Prisoner's Dilemma Game. Cooperation among players is incentivized by institutional capital, and selfish individuals incur a cost to identify situations where defection goes unpunished. In this environment, we explore the coevolution of types and institutional capital, with both the distribution of types and capital evolving through myopic best-response dynamics. The equilibria are shown to be Pareto-ranked. The main finding is that any equilibrium level of institutional capital exceeds the optimal amount in the long run. Thus, forward-looking optimal institutions not only foster a more cooperative culture but are also more cost-effective compared to the myopically optimal ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Salazar Restrepo, Verónica & Szentes, Balázs, 2024. "On the coevolution of cooperation and social institutions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 119490, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
  • Handle: RePEc:ehl:lserod:119490
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/119490/
    File Function: Open access version.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Emanuela Migliaccio & Thierry Verdier, 2018. "On the Spatial Diffusion of Cooperation with Endogenous Matching Institutions," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-27, August.
    2. Axelrod, Robert, 1981. "The Emergence of Cooperation among Egoists," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 75(2), pages 306-318, June.
    3. Guido Tabellini, 2008. "The Scope of Cooperation: Values and Incentives," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(3), pages 905-950.
    4. Tatsuya Sasaki & Hitoshi Yamamoto & Isamu Okada & Satoshi Uchida, 2017. "The Evolution of Reputation-Based Cooperation in Regular Networks," Games, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-16, January.
    5. Joel Slemrod, 2007. "Cheating Ourselves: The Economics of Tax Evasion," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(1), pages 25-48, Winter.
    6. Joung-Hun Lee & Yoh Iwasa & Ulf Dieckmann & Karl Sigmund, 2019. "Social evolution leads to persistent corruption," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116(27), pages 13276-13281, July.
    7. Ernst Fehr & Simon Gächter, 2002. "Altruistic punishment in humans," Nature, Nature, vol. 415(6868), pages 137-140, January.
    8. Davis, Lance & North, Douglass, 1970. "Institutional Change and American Economic Growth: A First Step Towards a Theory of Institutional Innovation," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 30(1), pages 131-149, March.
    9. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher, 2003. "The nature of human altruism," Nature, Nature, vol. 425(6960), pages 785-791, October.
    10. Sethi, Rajiv & Somanathan, E, 1996. "The Evolution of Social Norms in Common Property Resource Use," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(4), pages 766-788, September.
    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. Salazar, Verónica & Szentes, Balázs, 2024. "On the coevolution of cooperation and social institutions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    2. Isamu Okada, 2020. "A Review of Theoretical Studies on Indirect Reciprocity," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-17, July.
    3. Josef Falkinger, 2004. "Noncooperative Support of Public Norm Enforcement in Large Societies," CESifo Working Paper Series 1368, CESifo.
    4. Charles Noussair & Daan Soest & Jan Stoop, 2015. "Punishment, reward, and cooperation in a framed field experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(3), pages 537-559, October.
    5. Christine Clavien & Colby J Tanner & Fabrice Clément & Michel Chapuisat, 2012. "Choosy Moral Punishers," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(6), pages 1-6, June.
    6. Calabuig, Vicente & Fatas, Enrique & Olcina, Gonzalo & Rodriguez-Lara, Ismael, 2016. "Carry a big stick, or no stick at all," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 153-171.
    7. Ernesto Dal Bó & Marko Terviö, 2013. "Self-Esteem, Moral Capital, And Wrongdoing," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 599-663, June.
    8. Valencia Caicedo, Felipe & Dohmen, Thomas & Pondorfer, Andreas, 2023. "Religion and cooperation across the globe," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 479-489.
    9. Gächter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt, 2011. "The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 193-210, February.
    10. Weibull, Jörgen & Salomonsson, Marcus, 2005. "Natural selection and social preferences," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 588, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 27 Sep 2005.
    11. William Heller & K. Sieberg, 2008. "Functional unpleasantness: the evolutionary logic of righteous resentment," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 135(3), pages 399-413, June.
    12. Ahmadreza Asgharpourmasouleh & Atiye Sadeghi & Ali Yousofi, 2017. "A Grounded Agent-Based Model of Common Good Production in a Residential Complex: Applying Artificial Experiments," SAGE Open, , vol. 7(4), pages 21582440177, October.
    13. Tünde Paál & Tamás Bereczkei, 2015. "Punishment as a Means of Competition: Implications for Strong Reciprocity Theory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(3), pages 1-14, March.
    14. Ohdaira, Tetsushi, 2017. "Characteristics of the evolution of cooperation by the probabilistic peer-punishment based on the difference of payoff," Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 77-83.
    15. Angelo Antoci & Luca Zarri, 2015. "Punish and perish?," Rationality and Society, , vol. 27(2), pages 195-223, May.
    16. Emmanuelle Deglaire & Peter Daly & Fabrice Lec, 2021. "Exposure to tax dilemmas deteriorate individuals' self-declared tax morale," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 22(4), pages 363-397, December.
    17. Guererk, Oezguer & Rockenbach, Bettina & Wolff, Irenaeus, 2010. "The effects of punishment in dynamic public-good games," MPRA Paper 22097, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    19. Heller, William B. & Sieberg, Katri K., 2010. "Honor among thieves: Cooperation as a strategic response to functional unpleasantness," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 351-362, September.
    20. Luisa Faust & Maura Kolbe & Sasan Mansouri & Paul P. Momtaz, 2022. "The Crowdfunding of Altruism," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-29, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    cooperation; evolutionary dynamics; prisoner's dilemma;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J1 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics

    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:ehl:lserod:119490. 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: LSERO Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/lsepsuk.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.