Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization
Article in Press,

Abstract

The sources of cooperation in smallgroups are well documented. There is, however, less understanding aboutcooperation in large groups. I study the enforcement of property rightsin the mining camps of the American West. Miners demanded secureproperty rights and protection from violence to exploit the region'smineral wealth. In the model, miners must divide their labor betweenmining and supporting property rights institutions. The main predictionof the model is that cooperation in property rights enforcement emergesonly when social norms of cooperation are sufficiently widespread. Themodel also predicts that social norms are less effective in miningcamps with large populations or high labor productivity. I test thesepredictions against detailed evidence from the letters, diaries, andreminiscences of miners in 25 camps in California, Colorado, andMontana and find that the evidence supports the predictions. Theresults show that social norms can significantly lower the costs ofcollective action in large groups.

Differences in production were of course due to farm size and natural conditions. Large farms produced more than small farms and farms in the plains produced more than farms situated in more forested areas of the region. However, it is when we control for these factors that we reveal the most interesting differences in production achievements. First, property rights mattered; freeholders produced more per area unit than tenants on Crown and noble land. Secure property rights among self-owners together with rising prices and fixed taxes promoted investments in crop production. For those peasants that were tenants under the nobility, rising rents and the threat of eviction prevented such immense investments.

In sum, the results of the interactive models support our hypothesis that
the effects of foreign capital penetration on income inequality can be either
positive or negative, depending on the buffering role of the state. In societies
with relatively small public sectors, higher level of FDI is associated with higher inequality. However, in societies with larger public sectors, this relationship is reversed.

The success of BitTorrent has fostered thedevelopment of variants to its basic components. Some of the variantsadopt greedy approaches aiming at exploiting the intrinsic altruism ofthe original version of BitTorrent in order to maximize the benefit ofparticipating to a torrent. In this work we study BitTyrant, a recentlyproposed strategic client. BitTyrant tries to determine the exactamount of contribution necessary to maximize its download rate bydynamically adapting and shaping the upload rate allocated to itsneighbors. We evaluate in detail the various mechanisms used byBitTyrant to identify their contribution to the performance of theclient. Our findings indicate that the performance gain is due to theincreased number of connections established by a BitTyrant client,rather than for its subtle uplink allocation algorithm; surprisingly,BitTyrant reveals to be altruistic and particularly efficient indisseminating the content, especially during the initial phase of thedistribution process. The apparent gain of a single BitTyrant client,however, disappears in the case of a widespread adoption: our resultsindicate a severe loss of efficiency that we analyzed in detail. Incontrast, a widespread adoption of the latest version of the mainlineBitTorrent client would provide increased benefit for all peers.

Desire for social esteem is a source of prosocial behavior. [...] Control systems and pecuniary incentives erodemorale by signaling to the agent that the principal is not worthimpressing.

Latta, M.
(2007). Public transfers and private help: support networks of marginalised and poor individuals in Sweden in the 1990s. Göteborg: Dept. of Sociology Göteborg Univ.

Imagine a political elite confronting the prospect of social unrest. Somehow, politically disadvantaged groups have managed to overcome collective action obstacles to pose a threat. In principle, the elite could promise policy reform of some sort, for example an improvement in working conditions or housing or the distribution of land. They might well deliver on the promise initially, for to fail to do so would provoke the social unrest they currently fear. But once the conditions of unrest have dissolved, or the obstacles to collective action have re-emerged, it is possible for this elite to renege on its promises. That is to say, if the favourable conditions under which politically disadvantaged groups can mobilize are transitory, then promises from the elite that extend beyond the period in which those conditions are expected to hold are not credible. In order to be credible the promise has to take a more durable form, one difficult for the elite to reverse. Acemoglu and Robinson suggest that franchise extension possesses this greater durability – it is more difficult to reverse than, say, a land reform that can be undone.

Altruists, Egoists, and Hooligans in a Local Interaction Model Ilan Eshel; Larry Samuelson; Avner Shaked

American Economic Review 1998 88:157-179