TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Reuben, Ernesto
AU  - Riedl, Arno
        TI  - Public Goods Provision and Sanctioning in Privileged Groups
        PY  - 2007/Jul/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 2916
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp2916
        AB  - In public good provision, privileged groups enjoy the advantage that some of its members find it optimal to supply a positive amount of the public good. However, their inherent asymmetric nature may make the enforcement of cooperative behavior through informal sanctioning harder to accomplish. In this paper we experimentally investigate public good provision in normal and privileged groups with and without decentralized punishment. We find that compared to normal groups, privileged groups are relatively ineffective in using costly sanctions to increase everyone's contributions. Punishment is less targeted towards strong free-riders and they exhibit a weaker increase in contributions after being punished. Thus, we show that privileged groups are not as privileged as they initially seem.
        KW  - privileged groups
KW  - public goods
KW  - punishment
KW  - cooperation
KW  - collective action
        ER  -