Spatial Evolution of Social Norms in a Common-Pool Resource Game

Does Information Matter? Some Experimental Evidence from a Common-Pool Resource Game

This paper analyzes the effect of the availability of information about the payoff structure on the behavior of players in a Common-Pool Resource game. Six groups of six individuals played a complete information game, while other six groups played the same game but with no information about the payoff function. It will be shown that the patterns of investment decisions in both treatments are re...

Introducing Social Norms in Game Theory

This paper explicitly introduces norms in games, assuming that they shape (some) players’ utility and beliefs. People feel badly when they deviate from a binding norm, and the less other players deviate, the more badly they feel. Further, people anger at transgressors and get pleasure from punishing them. I then study how social norms and emotions affect cooperation, coordination, and punishmen...

The evolution of social norms

The Evolution of Social Norms

Social norms are patterns of behavior that are self-enforcing at the group level: everyone wants to conform when they expect everyone else to conform. There are multiple mechanisms that sustain social norms, including a desire to coordinate, fear of being sanctioned, signaling membership in the group, or simply following the lead of others. This article shows how stochastic evolutionary game th...

An intergenerational common pool resource experiment

Many renewable resources are in intergenerational common pools, exploited by one generation after another. In our experiment, the stock available to each generation depends on the extent of exploitation by previous generations and on resource’s growth rate, which is either ‘‘slow’’ or ‘‘fast.’’ Subjects show altruistic restraint in exploitation, but not enough to achieve the social optimum. The...