Miguel Fonseca (University of Exeter) on "Wealth secrecy and the effectiveness of punishment to sustain cooperation: Experimental evidence"

Relatore:  Miguel Fonseca - University of Exeter
  mercoledì 10 marzo 2021 alle ore 12.00 Zoom webinar: https://univr.zoom.us/j/83882561554
Costly peer punishment has been demonstrated to effectively promote and sustain cooperation in small scale societies and communities around the world. Yet it is rare in larger, more complex societies, where enforcement of cooperation is delegated to the State. We conjecture that wealth inequality combined with wealth secrecy (both features of contemporaneous societies) are at the heart of this. Uncertainty about the ability to contribute hampers those in large societies to evaluate the fairness of peers’ contributions unlike in more egalitarian, transparent small scale societies, therefore undermining the capacity of altruistic punishment to sustain cooperation. We test this conjecture experimentally. We find that wealthy subjects contribute a smaller proportion of their endowment than the disadvantaged. Introducing wealth secrecy leads to lower cooperation when punishment is available but has no impact on cooperation when punishment is unavailable. Introducing peer punishment increases cooperation but to a much lesser extent when endowments are secret. The frequency and intensity with which subjects punish is independent of wealth level or wealth secrecy. As a result, groups with wealth secrecy and peer punishment are poorer and have greater wealth inequality than societies without either feature. In a separate experiment, we determine that advantaged individuals have a higher willingness to pay to keep their wealth secret.

Referente
Roberto Ricciuti

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Data pubblicazione
21 dicembre 2020

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