Public goods and the public financing of major European seaports

Experiments using the public goods game have repeatedly shown that in cooperative social environments, punishment makes cooperation flourish, and withholding punishment makes cooperation collapse. In less cooperative social environments, where antisocial punishment has been detected, punishment was detrimental to cooperation. The success of punishment in enhancing cooperation was explained as deterrence of free riders by cooperative strong reciprocators, who were willing to pay the cost of punishing them, whereas in environments in which punishment diminished cooperation, antisocial punishment was explained as revenge by low cooperators against high cooperators suspected of punishing them in previous rounds. The present paper reconsiders the generality of both explanations. Using data from a public goods experiment with punishment, conducted by the authors on Israeli subjects (Study 1), and from a study published in Science using sixteen participant pools from cities around the world (Study 2), we found that: 1. The effect of punishment on the emergence of cooperation was mainly due to contributors increasing their cooperation, rather than from free riders being deterred. 2. Participants adhered to different contribution and punishment strategies. Some cooperated and did not punish (‘cooperators’); others cooperated and punished free riders (‘strong reciprocators’); a third subgroup punished upward and downward relative to their own contribution (‘norm-keepers’); and a small sub-group punished only cooperators (‘antisocial punishers’). 3. Clear societal differences emerged in the mix of the four participant types, with high-contributing pools characterized by higher ratios of ‘strong reciprocators’, and ‘cooperators’, and low-contributing pools characterized by a higher ratio of ‘norm keepers’. 4. The fraction of ‘strong reciprocators’ out of the total punishers emerged as a strong predictor of the groups’ level of cooperation and success in providing the public goods.

Download Full-text

Ethnic trust, minority status, and public goods in post-conflict societies

Journal of Peace Research ◽

10.1177/0022343320984211 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 002234332098421

Author(s):

Sam Whitt

Keyword(s):

Public Goods ◽

Public Good ◽

Intergroup Contact ◽

Minority Group ◽

Civil Liberties ◽

Minority Status ◽

The Public ◽

Attitudes And Behaviors ◽

Post Conflict ◽

History Of

This study considers how ethnic trust and minority status can impact the ability of ethnic groups to pursue cooperative public goods, focusing on groups with a history of conflict and lingering hostility. A public good experiment between ethnic Albanians and Serbs in postwar Kosovo reveals that subjects contribute far more to a mutually beneficial public good when they are part of an experimentally induced coethnic majority. However, when in the minority, subjects not only underinvest, but many actively divest entirely, privatizing the public good. Majority/minority status also has wide-ranging implications for how individuals relate to real-world public goods and the institutions of government that provide them. Compared to majority Albanians, survey data indicate how minority Serbs in Kosovo express greater safety and security concerns, feel more politically, socially, and economically excluded, are more dissatisfied with civil liberties and human rights protections, and are less likely to participate politically or pay taxes to support public goods. Conflict-related victimization and distrust of out-groups are strong predictors of these minority group attitudes and behaviors. This suggests a mechanism for how conflict amplifies out-group distrust, increasing parochial bias in public good commitments, especially among minorities who are wary of exploitation at the hands of an out-group majority. To restore trust, this study finds that institutional trust and intergroup contact are important to bridging ethnic divides that inhibit public good cooperation.

Download Full-text

Cooperation and competition between pair and multi-player social games in spatial populations

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-91532-5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Attila Szolnoki ◽

Xiaojie Chen

Keyword(s):

Public Goods ◽

Evolutionary Game Theory ◽

Evolutionary Game ◽

Pair Interaction ◽

Public Goods Game ◽

Point Interactions ◽

Social Games ◽

The Public ◽

Specific Parameter ◽

Group Members

AbstractThe conflict between individual and collective interests is in the heart of every social dilemmas established by evolutionary game theory. We cannot avoid these conflicts but sometimes we may choose which interaction framework to use as a battlefield. For instance some people like to be part of a larger group while other persons prefer to interact in a more personalized, individual way. Both attitudes can be formulated via appropriately chosen traditional games. In particular, the prisoner’s dilemma game is based on pair interaction while the public goods game represents multi-point interactions of group members. To reveal the possible advantage of a certain attitude we extend these models by allowing players not simply to change their strategies but also let them to vary their attitudes for a higher individual income. We show that both attitudes could be the winner at a specific parameter value. Interestingly, however, the subtle interplay between different states may result in a counterintuitive evolutionary outcome where the increase of the multiplication factor of public goods game drives the population to a fully defector state. We point out that the accompanying pattern formation can only be understood via the multipoint or multi-player interactions of different microscopic states where the vicinity of a particular state may influence the relation of two other competitors.

Download Full-text

A Case for Private Provision but Collective Ownership of Public Goods

The American Economist ◽

10.1177/056943459804200110 ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 42 (1) ◽

pp. 90-94 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

William D. Gerdes

Keyword(s):

Public Goods ◽

Public Good ◽

Private Provision ◽

The Public ◽

Collective Ownership ◽

Free Ride ◽

Voluntary Exchange

One strategy for generating Pareto results in a public good model is to create an environment where traders internalize the public good externality. The model presented here accomplishes this by separating the provision and ownership of public goods. Such goods are privately provided but collectively owned. Under this arrangement, Lindahl prices are generated through the voluntary exchange activities of consumers. Persistent attempts to free ride are not consistent with maximizing behavior which leads to internalization.

Download Full-text