  This article examines the effect of different other-regarding preference
types on the emergence of altruistic punishment behavior from an evolutionary
perspective. Our findings corroborate, complement, and interlink the
experimental and theoretical literature that has shown the importance of
other-regarding behavior in various decision settings. We find that a selfish
variant of inequity aversion is sufficient to quantitatively explain the level
of punishment observed in contemporary experiments: If disadvantageous inequity
aversion is the predominant preference type, altruistic punishment emerges in
our model to a level that precisely matches the empirical observations. We use
a new approach that closely combines empirical results from a public goods
experiment together with an evolutionary simulation model. Hereby we apply
ideas from behavioral economics, complex system science, and evolutionary
biology.
