Third Party Punishment and Criminal Behaviour

In this paper we report the results of two experiments, each one comprising two designs (a prisoner dilemma and a third party punishment; Fehr et al., 2004), conducted with a sample of University students and a sample of Camorra prison inmates, both coming from the same Italian region (Campania). Our research hypothesis is that there are consistent differences in cooperative and sanctioning behaviour between the two samples, though they come from very similar economic and cultural backgrounds. The presence of these differences would justify the claim that economic analyses of crime must be integrated with a behavioural perspective. The results of the experiments fully support our research hypothesis, as we find substantial differences between the two samples.