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Recent experiments show that feedback transmission can mitigate opportunistic behavior in repeated social dilemmas. Two nonexcludable explanations have been investigated: strategic signaling and nonmonetary sanctioning. This literature builds on the intuition that under both partner matching (where the same groups of players interact many times) and stranger matching (where groups change continuously), feedback may work as a nonmonetary sanctioning device, but only the former also allows for strategic signaling. Empirical evidence on the two explanations is mixed. Moreover, the usual design may give rise to confounding matching protocol effects.

My experiment provides a novel empirical testbed for different channels by which feedback – costless disapproval points – may affect behavior in a repeated public goods game. In particular, it is based on a random matching scheme that neutralizes the confounding effects of different matching protocols on behavior.

The transmission of feedback is found to foster prosocial behavior. The data favor the nonmonetary sanctioning explanation rather than the signaling hypothesis.

This study provides a novel set of evidence that (i) communication may mitigate selfishness in social dilemmas and (ii) the source of this phenomenon may be linked to the emotional reaction that communication evokes in humans.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of three types of peer monitoring and punishment tools on the performance of a group contract for the control of agricultural non-point source pollution (ANPSP) in China.

Experimental economics.

All the three tools result in efficiency improvement and show little difference in performance. In addition, they break the theoretical Nash equilibrium of the team entry auction and help to better reveal bidders’ private cost information.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study can be the first laboratory experiment study in the area of ANPSP in China and might provide some beneficial lessons for China’s policy-makers.

We augment a standard bilateral gift-exchange game to allow employees to communicate their gratitude for, or disapproval toward, the wage assigned to them by their manager. This provides employees with a means of reciprocation or emotion expression toward the employee which is not available in a standard gift-exchange game and may substitute for the higher-than-equilibrium efforts commonly seen in this environment. We find that employees express gratitude or disapproval according to the wage received, but these messages are not a substitute for monetary reciprocation as the relationship between wages and effort is unchanged. These results suggest that employees view the messages as a form of emotional expression independent from rewarding or punishing managers. Average wage levels are little affected by allowing messages, although wages do fall more over time in the absence of messages and individual managers’ wage choices are affected by the messages they receive.

Shang and Croson (2009) found that providing information about the donation decisions of others can have a positive impact on individual donations to public radio. In this study, we attempted to replicate their results, but found no evidence that social information affected donation decisions. However, most of our donors were renewing members, a group which Shang and Croson also found was not influenced by social information.

This paper provides an experimental examination of the effects of ostracism on cooperation. Ostracism is one of the most radical forms of peer pressure. More generally, ostracism is the exclusion of disapproved individuals from interaction with a social group. By performing a laboratory experiment involving a public good game with exclusion, the paper provides empirical evidence that threats of exclusion increase contributions. The results show that subjects exclude their peers for two reasons. Subjects are willing to punish unfair behaviors (non‐strategic reason) and expect changes in behavior in response to exclusions (strategic reason).

This chapter argues that reciprocity provides a key to understanding corrupt behavior and its limitations. It allows for an understanding why agents not only are guided by explicit incentives but also serve those to whom they owe gratitude. It allows to observe how citizens disregard their narrow-minded interests and engage in altruistic punishment, potentially exercising negative reciprocity toward a corrupt leadership. It shows how reciprocity is at the center of criminal networks and how reform sometimes enhances rather than inhibits this dismal form of reciprocity. It finally reveals how humans are at risk of reciprocating toward their own self-image, which may inhibit them from impartially assessing their misdeeds. A thorough understanding of the power of reciprocity can inspire novel avenues for reform, some of which are presented here.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether managers punish more and work harder in teams with peer monitoring when it is less costly to punish in a two-period, one-shot horizon.

An experiment is conducted in a two-period horizon with two treatments. The structure of performance measures makes it costless or costly to punish in the second period.

The results find punishing, contingent on first-period strategies, was significantly greater when it was costless compared to costly, as expected. Working, which is analogous to cooperating in prisoner dilemma games, was also significantly greater in the first and second periods when punishing was costless.

This paper is informative about the potential benefits of performance measures in dynamic team environments, which can be challenging and costly to develop. It adds insight into the design of self-discipline and tasks in teams which might help increase productivity.

This paper is related to the research on indefinite horizons, which attributes increases in cooperation to the existence of subgame perfect strategies to cooperate and potential gains from future cooperation. In comparison, this study examines the effects of the existence of subgame perfect strategies to work in isolation from the potential gains from future interactions. In addition, it examines whether their potential benefits depend on the cost of punishing when punishing is subgame perfect in a one-shot horizon.

We review the existing laboratory experimental studies on corruption that have generated results with clear policy implications. We present and discuss experimental findings on the role that both monetary incentives and nonmonetary motivations may play in corruption decision-making, and, hence, in the fight against corruption.

Using the ethical consequentialist theory of utilitarianism, this paper aims to demonstrate the correlation between the prosecution of Arthur Andersen LLP and the United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) increased use of pretrial diversion agreements, both nonprosecution and deferred prosecution agreements (N/DPA) for criminal corporations.

Through an analysis of previous literature, the United States Justice Manual, and data from the Corporate Prosecution Registry, this study examines the trend of N/DPAs from 1992 to 2021. Specifically, the data is examined to assess whether a pattern exists before and after the 2002 prosecution of Andersen.

This study finds an exponential increase of N/DPAs after Andersen’s prosecution. The DOJ’s basis for the increased use of these agreements is rooted in the utilitarian theory that the punishment of criminal corporations should deter and rehabilitate behavior while also maximizing the benefit to society (e.g. shareholders, employees and business community). The justice manual, memorandums and public speeches explicitly promote the use of N/DPAs for corporations to minimize collateral damage and the potential for negative societal impact.

This study applies a utilitarian framework to explain the criminal justice system’s increased use of pretrial diversion agreements for criminal corporations.