Economics Department Working Paper Series
Working Paper Number
2009-05
Publication Date
2009
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/1066794
Recommended Citation
Hwang, Sung-Ha, "Larger groups may alleviate collective action problems" (2009). Economics Department Working Paper Series. 7.
https://doi.org/10.7275/1066794
Comments
This paper shows how larger group size can enhance punishing behavior in social dilemmas and hence support higher levels of cooperation. We focus on describing confict technology using Lanchester's equations and study the role of "collectivity" of punishment to support cooperation in large groups. The main results suggest that as long as defectors are, even slightly, less "collective" than punishers, Lanchester's law can be applied to show that a smaller proportion of punishers can successfully eliminate defectors as the size of the population increases.