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Monitoring institutions in indefinitely repeated games

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Gabriele Camera  and
Marco Casari
Gabriele Camera*
Affiliation:
Economic Science Institute, Chapman University, Orange, CA 92866, USA University of Basel, Basel CH-4002, Switzerland
Marco Casari*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Bologna, Piazza Scaravilli 2, 40126 Bologna, Italy
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Abstract

Does monitoring past conduct facilitate intertemporal cooperation? We designed an experiment characterized by strategic uncertainty and multiple equilibria where coordinating on the efficient outcome is a challenge. Participants, interacting anonymously in a group, could pay a cost either to obtain information about their counterparts, or to create a freely available public record of individual conduct. Both monitoring institutions were actively employed. However, groups were unable to attain higher levels of cooperation compared to a treatment without monitoring. Information about past conduct alone thus appears to be ineffective in overcoming coordination challenges.

Keywords

CoordinationInformationEquilibrium selectionConventionsSocial dilemmas

JEL classification

C90: General C70: General D80: General
Type
Original Paper
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 21 , Issue 3: Special Issue in Honor of John Van Huyck , September 2018 , pp. 673 - 691
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Economic Science Association

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Footnotes

Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10683-017-9532-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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