Community enforcement and the cost of cooperation
研究了合作成本如何影响陌生人社会中社区执行的有效性，发现存在一个临界成本，超过它社区惩罚就能可信地制裁背叛者，且任何人口规模和贴现因子下都有目标成本可使社区执行有效支持合作。
Abstract This paper studies how the cost of cooperation affects the effectiveness of community enforcement in a society of strangers, as in Kandori (Rev Econ Stud 59:63–80, 1992) and Ellison (Rev Econ Stud 61:567–588, 1994). We identify a critical threshold for the cost of cooperation, beyond which community punishment becomes a credible sanction to defectors, regardless of the population size and discount factor. Furthermore, we demonstrate that for any population size and discount factor, there exists a target cost of cooperation that makes community enforcement effective in supporting cooperation. This target cost can be used as a coordination device to sustain cooperation as an equilibrium outcome when the cost of cooperation is endogenous.