Andreas Nicklisch and Irenaeus Wolff, Journal of Public Economic Theory, 13(5): 791–827, 2011
- Examines the contribution norms in a public-good setting by looking at punishment patterns.
- Full contribution is the norm, even though people tend to hold others to the standard of their own contribution: the more tokens I keep to myself, the more likely I will be punished; however, this effect is much stronger once I contribute less than my potential punisher.
- In the first (of many potential) punishment stage(s), we find no evidence of anti-social punishment (in the sense of players punishing more cooperative others). This strongly suggests that anti-social punishment in typical public-good experiments is mostly `pre-emptive retaliation‘.
- When others are allowed to voice their opinion on whether a player should punish a certain other player before the potential punisher decides about how strongly to punish (if at all), the punishment choices rely on the observers‘ judgements rather than directly on the norm. However, the judgements follow the same principles as the norm.
- Precedes a similar and often-cited GEB paper with similar conclusions by two years.
