TITLE:
Can Formal Institutions Lead to the Spillover Effect of Cooperation?
AUTHORS:
Rati Mekvabishvili
KEYWORDS:
Centralized Punishment, Spillover, Public Goods, Cooperation
JOURNAL NAME:
Theoretical Economics Letters,
Vol.11 No.2,
March
31,
2021
ABSTRACT: Can formal institutions shape prosocial behavior and
lead to the spillover effect of cooperation? To explore this question, we
experimentally test the spillover-based theory in a novel context. We measured
the spillover effect on cooperation in the same domain measured by the repeated
anonymous public goods game. We found strong evidence of altruism. Our results
are inconsistent with prediction of the spillover-based theory. Our finding
suggests that exposure to strong formal institutions that provide top-down
motivation for cooperation substantially improves cooperation in their
presence, but do not seem to lead to more prosociality after their absence.