Theoretical and experimental investigations of rewards and punishments

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26590029
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Economic theory
• Research Institution: Kochi University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: KAMIJO Yoshio 高知工科大学, 経済・マネジメント学群, 教授 (40453972)
• Co-Investigator(Renkei-kenkyūsha): MIFUNE Nobuhiro 高知工科大学, 経済・マネジメント学群, 准教授 (00708050) ; OKANO Yoshitaka 高知工科大学, 経済・マネジメント学群, 講師 (20513120)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 飴と鞭 / 懲罰 / 報酬 / ゲーム理論 / 実験

Outline of Final Research Achievements

We provide a game theoretical framework to explain how bottom punishment or top reward enhances performance of teams when there is heterogeneity across players in cost-performance relationships. We derive easy-to-check sufficient conditions to judge whether reward or punishment is better. From the sufficient condition, we know that punishment is better for less heterogeneous people and reward is better for more heterogeneous people if the performance function is additive. To check the theoretical predictions, we conducted the field and laboratory experiments. We found that while the reactions of the actual people to the two incentives are more complex than the predicted behavior by the theory, how they use sticks or carrots are consistent with the theoretical predictions.

Free Research Field

ゲーム理論