We examine whether the relationship between economic inequality and voluntary cooperation is influenced by the quality of local institutions, as proxied by corruption. We use representative data from a large-scale lab-in-the-field public goods experiment with over 1,300 participants across rural Vietnam. Our results show that inequality adversely affects aggregate contributions due to high endowment individuals contributing a significantly smaller share than those with low endowments. This negative effect of inequality on cooperation is stronger in high corruption environments. We find that corruption is associated with pessimistic beliefs about others’ contributions in heterogeneous groups, highlighting the indirect costs of corruption that are understudied in the literature. These findings have implications for public policies aimed at resolving local collective action problems.

我们研究了经济不平等和自愿合作之间的关系是否受到地方机构质量的影响，如腐败所代表的那样。我们使用来自越南农村超过 1,300 名参与者的大规模现场实验室公共产品实验的代表性数据。我们的结果表明，由于高禀赋个人贡献的份额明显低于低禀赋个人，不平等对总贡献产生了不利影响。这种不平等对合作的负面影响在高度腐败的环境中更为强烈。我们发现腐败与对其他人在异质群体中的贡献的悲观信念有关，突出了文献中未充分研究的腐败的间接成本。