Larger groups may alleviate collective action problems

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 conflict 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. JEL Categories: