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Portrait of Erik Wengström. Photo.

Erik Wengström

Professor, Director of Doctoral studies, Department of Economics

Portrait of Erik Wengström. Photo.

Cooperation, framing, and political attitudes

Author

  • Toke R. Fosgaard
  • Lars G. Hansen
  • Erik Wengström

Summary, in English

This paper shows that political attitudes are linked to cooperative behavior in an incentivized experiment with a large sample randomly drawn from the Danish population. However, this relationship depends on the way the experiment is framed. In the standard game in which subjects give to a public good, contributions are not linked to political attitudes. In an economically equivalent version, in which subjects take from a public good, left-wingers cooperate significantly more than subjects to the right of the political spectrum. This difference is to some extent caused by differences in beliefs and cooperation preferences but a substantial part is left unexplained, indicating that left wingers find cooperating under this institution more attractive than right wingers do.

Department/s

  • Department of Economics

Publishing year

2019

Language

English

Pages

416-427

Publication/Series

Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization

Volume

158

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Elsevier

Topic

  • Economics

Keywords

  • Cooperation
  • Experiment
  • Political ideology
  • Simulation
  • Social dilemma

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0167-2681