Introducing competition between groups may induce cooperation to emerge in defection games despite considerable cost of cooperation. If the groups can confine themselves to a cooperative sector, either by providing incentives to raise the cooperation level in one group, or by providing disincentives so that the cooperation level in the other group gets lowered to match that of the first, maximu...

Modern societies are characterized by competing organizations that rely predominantly on incentive schemes to align the behavior of their members with the organizations’ objectives. This study contributes to explaining why in so many cases incentive schemes have gradually crowded out cooperation as an organization device. Our explanation does not draw on free-riding, the obvious Achilles’ heel ...

Available online 19 September 2012 JEL classification: C72 D72 D74

Article history: Received 25 April 2011 Available online 26 June 2015 JEL classification: D72 D44

According to economists, severe legal sanctions deter violations of the law. According to legal scholars, people may obey law backed by mild sanctions because of norm-activation. We experimentally investigate the effects of mild and severe legal sanctions in the provision of public goods. The results show that severe sanctions almost perfectly deter free-riding. However, people also obey law ba...

Article history: Received 6 February 2009 Received in revised form 10 August 2009 Accepted 9 September 2009 Available online 30 September 2009 JEL classification: D71 D72 F53 H11

We consider a general class of imperfectly discriminating contests with privately informed players. We show that findings by Athey (2001) imply the existence of a Bayesian Nash equilibrium in monotone pure strategies. JEL classification: D72, D74, D82, C72

9 Article history: 10 Received 18 January 2011 11 Received in revised form 5 July 2011 12 Accepted 1 November 2011 13 Available online xxxx 1456 17 JEL classification: 18 D72 19 D91 20 H31 21 R12 22

9 Article history: 10 Received 18 January 2011 11 Received in revised form 5 July 2011 12 Accepted 1 November 2011 13 Available online xxxx 1456 17 JEL classification: 18 D72 19 D91 20 H31 21 R12 22

The ability of groups to implement efficiency-enhancing institutions is emerging as a central theme of research in economics. This paper explores voting on a scheme of intergroup competition, which facilitates cooperation in a social dilemma situation. Experimental results show that the competitive scheme fosters cooperation. Competition is popular, but the electoral outcome depends strongly on...