Cooperation under democracy and authoritarian norms

There is ample evidence for a “democracy premium”. Laws that have been implemented via election lead to a more cooperative behavior compared to a top-down approach. This has been observed using field data and laboratory experiments. We present evidence from Chinese students and workers who participated in public goods experiments and a value survey. We find a premium for top-down rule implementation stemming from people with stronger individual values for obeying authorities. When participants have values for obeying authorities, they even conform to non-preferred rule. Our findings provide strong evidence that the efficiency of political institutions depends on societal norms. * Acknowledgements: We are thankful to Qingchao Wang, Wei Yuan, Xiangdong Sun, Fei Xiong, Wei Tang, Fei Yang and Qian Wan for their enthusiastic research assistance. Funding for this project comes from “985 Project” of Beijing Normal University. We are grateful for constructive comments from Esther Blanco, Bernd Hayo, Michael Kosfeld, Antonio Nicolò, Rupert Sausgruber, Sebastian Prediger and participants of EEECON workshop in Innsbruck (4.Oct. 2012) and SEEDEC workshop in Berkeley (29-30. Nov. 2012) and GIGA seminar in Hamburg (29. May 2013) as well as to Lars Feld for providing the instructions to their experiment. All remaining errors are of course ours.