Marco Casari

If I have to give a two-word summary of my research agenda, I’d say: human cooperation. The aim of my studies is to identify what are the empirical factors that can enhance cooperative outcomes. In my project, I have deployed a variety of research methodologies, including experimental methods, economic modelling, and institutional analysis and I have applied these tools flexibly, guided by research questions rather than disciplinary silos. Broadly speaking, my scientific agenda can be grouped into three interconnected themes.

Governance of the commons. I have systematically studied the governance of the commons by combining institutional analyses (1, 2, 3), game theory (4), computational modelling (5, 6), and laboratory experiments (7, 8, 9, 10). I have studied historical commons in Italy, which provided evidence previously unknown by the international academic community. Through this integrated approach, I show the central role of long-term horizons in sustaining cooperation, uncover the potentially disruptive consequences of entry and exit options (1, 5), and identified the critical group size behind successful cooperation in the local commons (2). These contributions advance our knowledge about successful governance beyond the seven principles for long-enduring commons put forward by Elinor Ostrom.

1. Casari, M. Emergence of endogenous legal institutions. Journal of Economic History. 2007;67(1):238–262.
2. Casari, M., Tagliapietra, C. Group size in social-ecological systems [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1713496115] . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2018;115(11):2728–2733.
3. Casari, M., Lisciandra, M., Tagliapietra, C. Property rights, marriage and fertility. Explorations in Economic History. 2019;72:101286.
4. Casari, M., Lisciandra, M. Gender discrimination in property rights. Journal of Economic History. 2016;76(2):480–511.
5. Casari, M., Lisciandra, M., Saral, A. From Open to Closed Societies: Inequality, Migration, and Women’s Rights. Journal of Development Economics. 2025; in press.
6. Casari, M. Can genetic algorithms explain experimental anomalies? Computational Economics. 2004;23(3):245–276.
7. Casari, M., Plott, C. R. Decentralized management of common property resources. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 2003;51(2):217–247.
8. Casari, M. On the design of peer punishment experiments. Experimental Economics. 2005;8(2):107–115.
9. Casari, M., Luini, L. Group cooperation under alternative peer punishment technologies: An experiment. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization. 2009;71(2):273–282.
10. Casari, M., Luini, L. Peer punishment in teams: Expressive or instrumental choice? Experimental Economics. 2012;15(2):241–259.
    
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    Climate change and behavioural experiments. I explore the behavioural dimensions of climate policy, including climate mitigation and solar geoengineering (11, 12, 13, 14, 15). These studies not only demonstrated the feasibility of experimental approaches to global climate dilemmas but also clarified which behavioural obstacles are critical and which are less central. Here are three applications. A distinctive feature of climate change is the persistency of greenhouse gases, which can be described as a dynamic game. When contrasting cooperation in a dynamic setting vs. the most commonly adopted static settings, though, no clear differences emerged in aggregate cooperation levels, showing that, per se, this does not appear as a critical aspect that prevents effective climate mitigation (14). Climate change remains a social dilemma and using unconditional strategies leads to low cooperation (15). Introducing the possibility of using conditionally cooperative strategies similarly to what is done at the COPs, substantially raised cooperation levels (11, 16). On a different dimension, international evaluations and negotiations take as basis a cost-benefit analyses where sufferings and even death are translated into financial equivalents. Is this lack of salience generated by economic accounting what takes away urgency for mitigation efforts? When consequences for the same strategic situation are either financial or physical, there exist differences in cooperative patterns, but not to an extent that makes them critical in explaining the lack of decisive mitigation actions observed in the field (17). As a possible remedy, the use of solar geoengineering is no panacea, as it may generate extremely costly mis-coordination across countries (12, 13), hence mitigation policies are still urgently needed.

    
    

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11. Casari, M., Tavoni, A. Climate clubs in the laboratory [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2024.102211] . Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. 2024;110:102211.
12. Ghidoni, R., Abatayo, A. L., Bosetti, V., Casari, M., Tavoni, M. Governing climate geoengineering: Side-payments are not enough [https://doi.org/10.1086/724286] . Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. 2023;10(5):1149–1177.
13. Abatayo, A. L., Bosetti, V., Casari, M., Ghidoni, R., Tavoni, M. Solar geoengineering may lead to excessive cooling and high strategic uncertainty [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1916637117] . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2020;117(24):13393–13398.
14. Calzolari, G., Casari, M., Ghidoni, R. Carbon is Forever: A Climate Change Experiment on Cooperation [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeem.2018.09.002] . Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 2018;92:169–184.
15. Calzolari, G., Casari, M., Ghidoni, R. Climate change: Behavioral responses from extreme events and delayed damages [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2017.10.029] . Energy Economics. 2017;68(S1):103–115.
16. Casari, M., Ordaz-Cuevas, J. E., Tavoni, A. “I Will If You Will” in climate mitigation: Conditional cooperation in the lab. Working Paper. University of Bologna.
17. Casari, M., Fidanosky, F. Deciding for others: Behavioral insights into climate change choices. Working paper.
    
    
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    Social dilemmas among strangers and institutions for cooperation. A third major research cluster has advanced the study of cooperation beyond close-knit groups, focusing instead on interactions among strangers. My work has examined the roles of preferences, norms, and institutions in sustaining cooperation (18, 19, 20, 21, 22). I am especially proud of the ground-breaking results on the behavioural foundations of monetary systems (23, 24, 25, 26, 27), which transpired out of the innovative research agenda I developed during my ERC Starting Grant. According to current interpretations, money is strictly needed for economic transactions only in very limited situations, while it is instead ubiquitous in the field. I have shown that a monetary system emerges in a laboratory in settings where models predict it would not and that it delivers a higher welfare for society than other institutions that facilitate exchange, because of its superior behavioural ability to coordinate transactions. A different project shed light on the long-standing question of the territorial divides in economic development. A “lab-in-the-field” experiment mapped the norms of cooperation among strangers in the North and South of Italy. I have shown that (i) social capital does not correlate with actual cooperative behaviour; (ii) pro-sociality is different from the ability to cooperate; (iii) betrayal aversion and expectations about others are main drivers of cooperation; (iv) emigration does not explain regional differences in cooperation (28, 29, 30).
    
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18. Bigoni, M., Casari, M., Skrzypacz, A., Spagnolo, G. Time Horizon and Cooperation in Continuous Time [https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA11380] . Econometrica. 2015;83(2):587–616.
19. Camera, G., Casari, M. Cooperation among Strangers under the Shadow of the Future [https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.99.3.979] . American Economic Review. 2009;99(3):979–1005.
20. Casari, M., Bortolotti, S., Pancotto, F. Norms of punishment. Economic Inquiry. 2015;53(2):1171–1186.
21. Casari, M., Bigoni, M., Camera, G. Partners or strangers? American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. 2019;11(2):195–220.
22. Casari, M., Bigoni, M., et al. It takes two to cheat. European Economic Review. 2013;64:1–20.
23. Bigoni, M., Camera, G., Casari, M. Money and Trust among Strangers [https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1301888110] . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2013;110(37):14889–14893.
24. Casari, M., Bigoni, M., Camera, G. Experimental markets with frictions. Journal of Economic Surveys. 2013;27(3):540–560.
25. Casari, M., Bigoni, M., Camera, G. Money is more than memory. Journal of Monetary Economics. 2020;117:239–250.
26. Casari, M., Camera, G. The coordination value of monetary exchange. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics. 2014;6(1):290–314.
27. Casari, M., Camera, G., Bigoni, M. Money and trust among strangers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 2013;110(37):14889–14893.
28. Casari, M., Bigoni, M., et al. At the root of the North–South cooperation gap in Italy. Economic Journal. 2019;129(619):1139–1172.
29. Casari, M., Bigoni, M., et al. Amoral familism, social capital, or trust? Economic Journal. 2016;126(593):1318–1341.
30. Michaeli, M., Casari, M., Ichino, A., De Paola, M., Marandola, G., Scoppa, V. Civicness drain. Economic Journal. 2023;133:323–354.