We ask whether conformity, copying the most observed behavior in a population, can affect free riding in a public goods situation. Our model suggests that, if free riding is sufficiently frequent at the start of a public goods game, conformity will increase the growth rate of free riding. We...

Recently economists have become interested in why people who face social dilemmas in the experimental lab use the seemingly incredible threat of punishment to deter free riding. Three theories have evolved to explain punishment. We survey each theory and se behavioral data from surveys and...

Standard game theoretic models predict, based on subgame perfection, that public goods will not be provided even if agents are allowed to monitor free riders at some cost. Further, because punishment is not credible in these environments, this prediction is invariant to the size of groups....

Aspiration-based evolutionary dynamics have recently been used to model the evolution of fair play in the ultimatum game showing that incredible threats to reject low offers persist in equilibrium. We focus on two extensions of this analysis: we experimentally test whether assumptions about...