What stops us cooperating?
It's not so much the temptation to follow our self-interest or free ride. Instead, it's our fear of being exploited by others, writes Friederike Mengel, an economics professor.
Friederike Mengel is a professor of economics at the University of Essex and a visiting guest professor at Lund University. She is also a co-editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, an associate editor at the Economic Journal and the European Economic Review and a member of the editorial board of Experimental Economics and the Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics. She got her PhD in 2008 from the University of Alicante.