Altruism, cooperation and competition

A society is composed of rational selfish people who consider their own interests (homo economicus) and altruistic individuals who, despite their own interests, are socially self-sacrificing. The emergence and development of a market or any other social institution is determined by the iterated behaviors of individuals within this heterogeneity. Altruistic punishment is a vital tool in sustaining cooperation and the institutional structures of the public goods of these iterated behaviors. This thesis study deals with the impact on cooperation of the in-group and inter-group competitions working within the same time. The impact has been conducted with an experiment codified with z-tree and consistent with the multi level selection teories where the winners prize is paid by the loser subjects when in-group competition and by the loser group when inter-group competition.