Showing papers by "James Andreoni published in 1993"

Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma: Experimental Evidence

Abstract: This paper presents experiments designed to examine the sequential equilibrium reputation hypothesis in the finitely repeated prisoner's dilemma. The authors test the hypothesis by controlling the subjects' ability to build reputations and by manipulating their beliefs that their opponent is irrational or altruistic. The responses of subjects strongly support the sequential equilibrium prediction. The results also suggest an important role for 'homemade altruism,' that is, a natural tendency to cooperate that subjects bring to the experiment from the outside. The authors find that there may be no difference between the beliefs that an opponent is altruistic and the actual chance it is so. Copyright 1993 by Royal Economic Society.

An Experimental Test Of The Public Goods Crowding-Out Hypothesis

Abstract: This paper presents an experimental test of the proposition that government contributions to public goods, funded by lump-sum taxation, will completely crowd out voluntary contributions. It is found that crowding-out is incomplete and that subjects who are taxed are significantly more cooperative. This is true even though the tax does not affect the Nash equilibrium prediction. This result is taken as evidence for alternative models that assume people experience some private benefit from contributing to public goods. Copyright 1993 by American Economic Association.

A simple algorithm for determining who will contribute to a public good

Abstract: When a heterogeneous group of people provide themselves with a pure public good the resulting Nash equilibrium outcome will divide the group into contributors and free riders. This paper proposes a general algorithm for discovering which individuals in the group fall into which of these two classes. The algorithm is based on identifying, for each individual, how much of the public good must be provided by others to drive that individual’s contribution to zero.