The demand for complete and incomplete punishment institutions to promote cooperation

IF 2.3 3区经济学 Q2 ECONOMICS

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization Pub Date : 2025-05-22 DOI:10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107071

Christoph Bühren , Astrid Dannenberg , Philipp Händel

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Abstract

We use an experiment to study the demand for complete and incomplete formal punishment institutions and their ability to promote cooperation. Complete punishment institutions are implemented by the whole group and bind everyone. Incomplete punishment institutions are implemented by a subgroup and bind only the members of this subgroup. We distinguish between strictly incomplete institutions, in which only one subgroup can bind itself while the remaining individuals are unbound, and potentially incomplete institutions, in which two subgroups can bind themselves independently and separately in different institutions, potentially binding everyone. Theoretically, the demand for such formal punishment institutions should depend only on the benefit of cooperation within the group or subgroup bound by the institution. However, we hypothesize and the experimental results confirm that, in the case of incomplete punishment institutions, the benefit of cooperation has a much smaller impact on the demand than in complete punishment institutions. Instead, individuals’ cooperativeness and coordination between the subgroups become important determinants.

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要求完善和不完善的惩戒制度促进合作

本文通过实验研究了完备和不完备的正式惩罚制度的需求及其促进合作的能力。完备的惩罚制度由整个集团执行，约束每个人。不完全惩罚制度由一个子群体来实现，并且只约束该子群体的成员。我们区分严格不完备的制度和潜在不完备的制度，前者只有一个子群体可以约束自己，而其余的个人都不受约束，后者两个子群体可以在不同的制度中独立地、分别地约束自己，潜在地约束所有人。从理论上讲，对这种正式惩罚制度的需求应该只取决于受制度约束的群体或子群体内部合作的利益。然而，我们假设并且实验结果证实，在不完全惩罚制度下，合作利益对需求的影响远小于完全惩罚制度下的影响。相反，个体的合作和子群体之间的协调成为重要的决定因素。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

3.80

自引率

9.10%

发文量

392

期刊介绍： The Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization is devoted to theoretical and empirical research concerning economic decision, organization and behavior and to economic change in all its aspects. Its specific purposes are to foster an improved understanding of how human cognitive, computational and informational characteristics influence the working of economic organizations and market economies and how an economy structural features lead to various types of micro and macro behavior, to changing patterns of development and to institutional evolution. Research with these purposes that explore the interrelations of economics with other disciplines such as biology, psychology, law, anthropology, sociology and mathematics is particularly welcome.