Public goods and voting on formal sanction schemes

Abstract

The burgeoning literature on the use of sanctions to support the provision of public goods has largely neglected the use of formal or centralized sanctions. We let subjects playing a linear public goods game vote on the parameters of a formal sanction scheme capable of either resolving or exacerbating the free-rider problem, depending on parameter settings. Most groups quickly learned to choose parameters inducing efficient outcomes. We find that cooperative orientation, political attitude, gender and intelligence have a small but sometimes significant influence on voting.