The co-evolution of renewable natural resources and informal institutions, and the implications for government policy design

Dr. D.P. van Soest

Results 2006

The project has started only recently. The main focus of research has been how humans sustain cooperation in the presence of strong incentives to free ride. This work builds on the earlier work by Daan van Soest and Jana Vyrastekova. Also, we started a project on applying epidemiological models on the way in which social norms spread through a community. This is a joint project of Wageningen and Tilburg/Nijmegen.
The results on the usefulness of rewards in sustaining cooperation among agents is very impor tant to the research community. Until now the focus was on punishments as rewards were thought to be ineffective in sustaining cooperation. Our publication in Experimental Economics shows that this assumption is incorrect. And our ( forthcoming) book chapters show that individual behaviour is more complicated than previously thought.