Peer Punishment in Teams: Emotional or Strategic Choice?

Abstract

Punishing the free-riders of a team can promote group efficiency but is costly for the punisher. For this reason, economists see punishment as a second-order public good. We show in an experiment that subjects do not value punishment for its deterrence but instead for the satisfaction of retaliating. Punishment choices are made with little strategic reasoning.experiments ; public goods ; informal punishment ; emotions ; legal systems