RT Journal Article
SR 00
ID 10.1016/j.jebo.2021.02.016
A1 Mantilla, Cesar
A1 Zhou, Ling
A1 Wang, Charlotte
A1 Yang, Donghui
A1 Shen, Suping
A1 Seabright, Paul
T1 Favoring your in-group can harm both them and you: Ethnicity and public goods provision in China
JF Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization
YR 2021
FD 2021-05
VO vol. 185
SP 211
OP 233
AB Do people discriminate between co-ethnics and others in cooperative interactions? In an experiment in China, we find that participants in trust games send around 15% more to partners they know to be co-ethnics than to those whose ethnicity they do not know. Re- ceivers’ behavior is determined by amounts received and not by perceived ethnicity. In line with previous literature we find that subjects contribute more to public goods in ethnically homogeneous groups than in mixed groups. We find evidence for a new explanation that is not due to different intrinsic preferences for cooperation with ingroup and outgroup members. Instead, subjects’ willingness to punish in-group members for free-riding is re- duced when out-group members are present. This leads to lower contributions and net earnings in mixed groups. Thus favoritism towards co-ethnics can hurt both those engag- ing in favoritism and those being favored.
PB Elsevier
SN 0167-2681
LK https://publications.ut-capitole.fr/id/eprint/43179/
UL http://tse-fr.eu/pub/125442