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Does the reliability of institutions affect public good contributions? Evidence from a laboratory experiment
Author(s) -
Fochmann Martin,
Jahnke Björn,
Wagener Andreas
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
scottish journal of political economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.4
H-Index - 46
eISSN - 1467-9485
pISSN - 0036-9292
DOI - 10.1111/sjpe.12197
Subject(s) - affect (linguistics) , language change , salient , public good , norm (philosophy) , economics , public economics , public goods game , microeconomics , positive economics , political science , sociology , law , art , literature , communication
Reliable institutions, i.e., institutions that live up to the norms that agents expect them to keep foster cooperative behavior. We experimentally confirm this hypothesis in a public goods game with a salient norm that cooperation was socially demanded and corruption ought not to occur. When nevertheless corruption attempts came up, groups that were told that ‘the system’ had fended off the attempts made considerably higher contributions to the public good than groups that learned that attempts only did not affect their payoffs or that were not exposed to corruption at all.