Why Is China a High-Lambda Society?

摘要

Cultural and social values influence the level of cooperativeness in society, which in turn determines the level of lambda. Lambda (λ) represents the parameter used to determine the degree of cooperativeness among a particular societal group or society. Martin Weitzman and Chenggang Xu (1994) used a prisoner's dilemma game to demonstrate the influence of cooperative culture on property rights theory. The prisoner's dilemma was originally described as a static, noncooperative game with complete information. It is static as it is only played once and is noncooperative, with decisions made simultaneously so that players cannot learn from one another or communicate (McCarty 2000, 326). Weitzman and Xu (1994) let the outcome of a prisoner dilemma game be quantified by the parameter λ. This λ is valued between zero and one. A high value of λ, near one, means a cooperative solution, which comes close to looking as if it were the outcome cooperative collusion. A low value of λ, near zero, means a noncooperative solution that is far from the cooperative solution, thus yielding low individual payoffs.