Partners vs. Strangers: identification of the Group Membership in the Contribution to Public Goods

This paper studies the effect of experience, the inter-temporal strategy and the group size as the possible explanations to the highest levels of contribution to equilibrium in a game of public goods -- All these variables together allow capturing the effect of the group membership; keeping in mind that the more information collected about its members' behavior, the greater the levels of contribution -- Therefore, treatment was implemented in which subjects interact in a group with permanent members (partners), and other treatment where the group changes randomly in each round (strangers) -- In addition, crossed treatments were carried out, in which first stage partners or strangers’ status is surprisingly changed in the second stage of the experiment -- Groups of four or five members were considered to analyze the effect of the group size -- Results show that the average contribution is positive and gradually converges to the Nash equilibrium as repetitions increase -- Although there is evidence in favor of the intertemporal strategy, it critically depends on the stability of the group's composition -- Regarding the group size, four-member groups show a higher average contribution

• Autores: Cortés Aguilar, Alexandra; Palacio García, Luis Alejandro; Parra Carreño, Daniel Felipe
• Fecha de publicación: 2014
• Institución: Universidad EAFIT
• Repositorio: Repositorio EAFIT
• Idioma: spa
• OAI Identifier: oai:repository.eafit.edu.co:10784/7815
• Acceso en línea: http://hdl.handle.net/10784/7815
• Palabra clave: C92; H41; Economía experimental; BIENES PÚBLICOS; MODELOS MATEMÁTICOS; EQUILIBRIO (ECONOMÍA); TEORÍA DE LOS JUEGOS; Public goods; Mathematical models; Equilibrium (economics); Game theory
• License: Acceso abierto