09:30 - 11:00
Parallel track
Room: Opzoomerkamer
Learning by (not) doing
Enrique Fatas 1, 4, Anna Rita Bennato 1, Katarina Dankova 2, Antonio J Morales 3
1 University of Loughborough, Loughborough
2 University of East Anglia, Norwich
3 Universidad de Málaga, Málaga
4 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia

This paper reports on an experiment designed to test the effectiveness of coordinated punishment in teams. In our setting, participants decide how much to contribute to a team account in the first stage of the game and punish other team members in the second. While team production technology is linear, punishment requires coordination, as punishers pay in full the points they send but only the minimum number of points is received by punished participants. We study how the presence of an enforcing institution in one domain (sanctions) shapes behavior in another (contributions). We compare two punishment institutions (of High and Low effectiveness) with three benchmarks (with and without punishment). Coordinated punishment significantly, but moderately, increases contributions in both the High and Low conditions, and significantly increases earnings only in the former. We find strong evidence of behavioral spillovers between the punishment and contribution stages in the High condition. Successful teams learn to contribute most of their endowment without learning to punish, as they fail to coordinate sanctions.


Reference:
Fr-Punishment-4
Session:
Punishment
Presenter/s:
Enrique Fatas
Room:
Opzoomerkamer
Date:
Friday, 3 May
Time:
09:30 - 11:00
Session times:
09:30 - 11:00