Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance,
Stockholm School of Economics

No 76: Social Relations in the Workplace: a "Linked Games" Approach

Giancarlo Spagnolo
Additional contact information
Giancarlo Spagnolo: Department of Economics, Postal: Churchill College, Cambridge, and Stockholm School of Economics, Box 6501, 113 83 Stockholm, Sweden.

Abstract: The paper analyses how cooperation in a repeated social game may help to sustain cooperation in a "linked" repeated production game. We show that this may happen a)because of available "social capital", defined as the slack of punishment power present in the social repeated game, b) because, when agents' utility function is strictly concave in the outcome of the two games, a simultaneous punishment in the linked games turns out to be a stronger threat than the sum of the independent punishments in the two component games, and c) because the linkage between two repeated games may generate transfers of "trust".

Keywords: Social capital; social relations; employment relation; peer pressure; work norms

JEL-codes: C73; D23; D73; M12

31 pages, October 1995

Download statistics

Published as
Giancarlo Spagnolo, (1999), 'Social Relations in the Workplace: a "Linked Games" Approach', Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, vol 38, no 1, pages 1-25

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Helena Lundin ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

This page generated on 2024-02-11 18:19:13.