@article{Antoci:115847,
      recid = {115847},
      author = {Antoci, Angelo and Zarri, Luca},
      title = {Punish and Perish?},
      address = {2011-08},
      number = {829-2016-55234},
      series = {ES},
      pages = {28},
      year = {2011},
      abstract = {The evolution of large-scale cooperation among genetic  strangers is a fundamental unanswered question in the  social sciences. Behavioral economics has persuasively  shown that so called ‘strong reciprocity’ plays a key role  in accounting for the endogenous enforcement of  cooperation. Insofar as strongly reciprocal players are  willing to costly sanction defectors, cooperation  flourishes. However, experimental evidence unambiguously  indicates that not only defection and strong reciprocity,  but also unconditional cooperation is a quantitatively  important behavioral attitude. By referring to a prisoner’s  dilemma framework where punishment (‘stick’) and rewarding  (‘carrot’) options are available, here we show analytically  that the presence of cooperators who don’t punish in the  population makes altruistic punishment evolutionarily weak.  We show that cooperation breaks down and strong reciprocity  is maladaptive if costly punishment means ‘punishing  defectors’ and, even more so, if it is coupled with costly  rewarding of cooperators. In contrast, punishers don’t  perish if cooperators, far from being rewarded, are  sanctioned. These results, based on an extended notion of  strong reciprocity, challenge evolutionary explanations of  cooperation that overlook the ‘dark side’ of altruistic  behavior.},
      url = {http://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/115847},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.22004/ag.econ.115847},
}