Uncovering the Heterogeneity behind Cross-Cultural Variation in Antisocial Punishment

Adrian Bruhin, Kelly Janizzi and Christian Thöni

Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie from Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie

Abstract: Antisocial punishment in public good games, i.e., punishment of individuals who contributed the same or more than their punisher, varies substantially across cultures. We exploit the data of Herrmann et al. (2008) and estimate a finite mixture model to uncover the heterogeneity behind this variation in a parsimonious way. The finite mixture model reveals that, overall, the population consists of two cleanly segregated punisher types: 35.3% Type AF subjects who engage in antisocial punishment as wellas free rider punishment and 64.7% Type F subjects who engage exclusively in free rider punishment. Moreover, we find that in cultures with high levels of antisocial punishment, Type AF subjects are more frequent. Despite its parsimony, this classification of subjects into types predicts mean earnings per group and enhances our understanding of the large variation in the effectiveness of peer punishment across cultures.

Keywords: Antisocial Punishment; Public Good Games; Finite Mixture Models; Heterogeneity; Cultural Variation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31 pp.
Date: 2019-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-evo and nep-exp
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Journal Article: Uncovering the heterogeneity behind cross-cultural variation in antisocial punishment (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:lau:crdeep:19.08

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