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Getting Punnishment Right: Do Costly Monitoring or Redustributive Punishment Help?

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Abstract
We introduce new treatments of a voluntary contribution mechanism with opportunities to punish, to see how contributions and punishments change when (a) each dollar lost in punishment must be awarded to another team member and/or when (b) obtaining information on individualsí contributions is a costly choice. Conjectures that tying punishments to rewards might reduce punishment of high contributors (perverse punishment) or increase overall punishing are not completely born out, but innovation (a) nonetheless succeeds in making the net punishment of high contributors much less common because they receive enough rewards to offset punishment. A surprise finding is that innovation (b) also decreases the incidence of misdirected punishment, since high contributors do more monitoring than low ones while low contributors do most of the perverse punishing. Both innovations raise both contributions and earnings relative to the familiar VCM-with-punishment treatment.

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  • Talbot Page & Louis Putterman & Bruno Garcia, 2008. "Getting Punnishment Right: Do Costly Monitoring or Redustributive Punishment Help?," Working Papers 2008-1, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bro:econwp:2008-1
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    Cited by:

    1. DeAngelo, Gregory & Gee, Laura Katherine, 2018. "Peers or Police? Detection and Sanctions in the Provision of Public Goods," IZA Discussion Papers 11540, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. David Masclet & Charles N. Noussair & Marie-Claire Villeval, 2013. "Threat And Punishment In Public Good Experiments," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(2), pages 1421-1441, April.
    3. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David, 2015. "Emotion venting and punishment in public good experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 55-67.
    4. David L. Dickinson & Daivd Masclet, 2014. "Emotions and Punishment in Public Good Experiments," Working Papers 14-03, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.

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