Cooperative norms and norms in cooperatives : public goods in the lab and in the (wine) field

Le mardi 11 mars à 11h, en salle Maurice Desplas, le Laboratoire d'économie mathématique et de microéconomie appliquée (Lemma) accueillera Angela SUTAN. Elle présentera « Cooperative norms and norms in cooperatives: public goods in the lab and in the (wine) field » avec François COCHARD, Xavier HOLLANDTS, et Eli SPIEGELMAN. 

Angela SUTAN est professeure d’économie à l’ESSEC et spécialiste d'économie comportementale et expérimentale.

Abstract :

Despite the explicit integration of social goals into their governance, members’ adherence to the cooperative is not guaranteed. Some of them are reluctant: they participate, but lack intrinsic commitment; opportunistic behaviors then can trouble the collective project. External observers may not trust that cooperative principles are really endorsed by members. This paper studies these issues with laboratory and lab-in-the-field experiments. Based on interviews and pilots with cooperative members, we adapt a standard linear public goods game to isolate the basic principles of cooperatives in a menu of institutions. To see whether the effects are specific to cooperatives, we implement choice frames of a cooperative, a general business enterprise, and an unframed « group ». Because cooperatives are fundamentally social structures, and therefore likely rely on norms for their effectiveness, we also apply a Keynesian « beauty contest » procedure to test the extent to which expectations of others’ behavior influences cooperation. Our main results show that, when compared to other groups, individuals in a cooperative frame contribute more. Nevertheless, in the lab, cooperative members have no strict preferences for institutions meant to induce more cooperation. In the field, wine producers engage in effective redistribution public goods, while their business partners fail to anticipate it.