Nikiforakis, Nikos; NORMANN, HANS-THEO; Wallace, Brian
(
2007-01)
The imposition of sanctions is one of the most common means of enforcing cooperation indecentralized interactions. Typically, agents are asymmetric in the sense that each has a differentsanctioning power. Using a public-good experiment we analyze such a decentralizedpunishment institution in which agents are asymmetric. The asymmetric punishment institutionprevents the decay of cooperation towards the non-cooperative equilibrium level. Strongagents contribute less to the public good, but punish more than weak agents. At the aggregatelevel, we observe remarkable similarities between outcomes in asymmetric and symmetricpunishment institutions.