Cooperation Under the Threat of Expulsion in a Public Goods Experiment
- 1 January 2004
- preprint
- Published by Elsevier in SSRN Electronic Journal
Abstract
In a public goods experiment with the opportunity to vote to expel members of a group, we found that contributions rose to nearly 100% of endowments with significantly higher efficiency compared with a coexpulsion baseline. Expulsions were strictly of the lowest contributors, and there was an exceptionally strong fall-off in contributions in the last period, when the expulsion threat was unavailable. Our findings support the intuition that the threat of expulsion or ostracism is one device that helps groups to provide public goods.Keywords
This publication has 26 references indexed in Scilit:
- The Effect of Rewards and Sanctions in Provision of Public GoodsSSRN Electronic Journal, 2006
- Repeated Interaction and the Evolution of Preferences for ReciprocityThe Economic Journal, 2003
- The Effect of Communication Media on CooperationGerman Economic Review, 2003
- Monetary and Nonmonetary Punishment in the Voluntary Contributions MechanismAmerican Economic Review, 2003
- Do Non-strategic Sanctions Obey the Law of Demand? The Demand for Punishment in the Voluntary Contribution MechanismSSRN Electronic Journal, 2003
- Voluntary Association in Public Goods Experiments: Reciprocity, Mimicry, and EfficiencySSRN Electronic Journal, 2002
- Conversation and Cooperation in Social DilemmasRationality and Society, 1995
- An Experimental Study of the Centipede GameEconometrica, 1992
- COMMUNICATION and FREE‐RIDING BEHAVIOR: THE VOLUNTARY CONTRIBUTION MECHANISMEconomic Inquiry, 1988
- Group Size Effects in Public Goods Provision: The Voluntary Contributions MechanismThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1988