Abstract
Social and political inequality among individuals is a common driving force behind the breakdown in cooperation. In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally study cooperation among individuals facing a sequence of collective-action problems in which the benefits of cooperation are divided according to political power that is obtained through a contest. We have three main results. First, we find that cooperation predictably responds to the fundamental parameters of the collective-action problem. Specifically, it is increasing in the benefit to cooperation and how much benefit is gained from partial group cooperation, and decreasing in the number of players. Second, we find that when players are unrestricted in their expenditures in the contest, cooperation is much lower than when expenditures are set to a specific proportion of earnings. Finally, we find that individual norms and beliefs account for a substantial proportion of explained variance in individuals’ decisions to cooperate.
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Acknowledgements
Supported by the U. S. Army Research Office grants W911NF-14-1-0637 and W911NF-18-1-0138, the Office of Naval Research grant W911NF-17-1-0150, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant FA9550-21-1-0217, and the John Templeton Foundation. This paper benefited from discussions with and comments from Tim Cason, David Cooper, David Gill, and John Kagel. The paper also benefited from comments by participants at the 2023 Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory, 2022 North American Economic Science Association meeting, 2022 Missouri Valley Economic Association Meetings, 2023 Eastern Economic Association Conference, 2023 Purdue-IU Experimental and Behavioral Mini-Conference and seminar participants at Purdue University and The Ohio State University.
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Rosokha, Y., Lyu, X., Tverskoi, D. et al. Evolution of cooperation in the indefinitely repeated collective action with a contest for power. Econ Theory (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-023-01549-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-023-01549-2