Scandinavian Working Papers in Economics

Working Papers,
Lund University, Department of Economics

No 2017:4: Cooperation, Framing and Political Attitudes

Toke R. Fosgaard (), Lars G. Hansen () and Erik Wengström ()
Additional contact information
Toke R. Fosgaard: Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Postal: Rolighedsvej 23, , 1958 Frederiksberg C, , Denmark
Lars G. Hansen: Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Postal: Rolighedsvej 23, , 1958 Frederiksberg C, , Denmark
Erik Wengström: Department of Economics, Lund University, Postal: Department of Economics, School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Box 7082, S-220 07 Lund, Sweden

Abstract: 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 the same regardless of political attitudes. In an economically equivalent version, in which subjects take from a public good, left-wingers cooperate significantly more than subjects in the middle or to the right of the political spectrum. Through simulation techniques we find that this difference in the framing effect across political point of views is to some extent explained by differences in beliefs and basic cooperation preferences.

Keywords: Cooperation; Social Dilemma; Political Ideology; Experiment; Simulation

JEL-codes: C90; D03; H41

21 pages, March 2, 2017

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wp17_4.pdf PDF-file 
wp17_4_appendix.pdf PDF-file Appendix

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