Andreas Nicklisch (Hamburg)

Date(s): Wednesday 14th October 2015 (14:00-15:00)
Description: This week's seminar will be given by Andreas Nicklisch from the University of Hamburg.

Title: Defectors don't punish, they reward

Abstract: Voluntary cooperation is a key asset for human societies (Henrich, 2006, Nowak, 2006), but when there is a mismatch between what is best for the individual and what is the best for the group, cooperation is fragile. The existence of sanctioning mechanisms, opportunities for punishing defectors or rewarding cooperators, can help sustain cooperative behavior (Ostrom et al., 1992, Fehr & Gächter, 2000, 2002, Gürerk et al., 2006, Sefton et al., 2007, Gächter et al., 2008, Rand et al., 2009, Sutter et al., 2010, Markussen et al., 2014). However, to punish or reward is often costly and how the costs of sanctions are distributed affects the sustainability of the sanctioning mechanism. In particular, if defectors do not share the sanctioning costs, sanctions might not be sustainable. We conduct a laboratory experiment where we compare the properties of punishment and reward. We find, in line with previous literature, that defectors do not punish other defectors (Dreber et al., 2008). In contrast, we find that defectors are willing to reward cooperators. Thus, the financial burden of rewards is shared among cooperators and defectors. As a result, individuals who reward are not doing worse than other members of their group.

Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics

Sir Clive Granger Building
University of Nottingham
University Park
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0)115 951 5458
Enquiries: jose.guinotsaporta@nottingham.ac.uk
Experiments: cedex@nottingham.ac.uk