Partner Selection in Public Goods Experiments

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Partner selection in public goods experiments∗ Giorgio Coricellia, Dietmar Fehrb Gerlinde Fellnerc , June 2003 Abstract This paper studies the effect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntary contribution to a public good. Subjects participate in six sequences of five rounds of a two-person public good game in partner design. At the end of each sequence subjects can select a new partner out of six group members. Unidirectional and bidirectional partner selection mechanisms are introduced and compared to controls with random partner rematching. Results demonstrate significantly higher contributions in correspondence to unidirectional partner selection than to bidirectional selection and random rematching. Average monetary valuation of being able to choose a partner is substantially high and remains stable. Keywords: public goods, partner selection, experiments JEL-Classification: C91, D62, H41 ∗ a b c We gratefully acknowledge valuable comments by Guido Biele, Anna Gunnthorsdottir, Werner G¨ th, Georg Kirchu steiger, Axel Ockenfels, J¨rg Rieskamp and Masanori Takezawa. We are indebted to Bettina Bartels for research o assistance. CNRS, Institut des Sciences Cognitives, Bron, France; and University of Siena, Department of Economics, Piazza S. Francesco 7, I-53100 Siena, Italy. e-mail: gcoricelli@unisi.it, e-mail: gcoricelli@unisi.it University of Vienna, Department of Economics, Hohenstaufengasse 9, A-1010 Vienna, Austria, e-mail: a9706955@unet.univie.ac.at Max Planck Institute for Research into Economic Systems, Strategic Interaction Group, Kahlaische Str. 10, D-07745 Jena, Germany. e-mail: fellner@mpiew-jena.mpg.de 1 Introduction Mounting evidence on reciprocal behavior in various social interactions (Andreoni 1988, Fehr and G¨chter 2000, Isaac and Walker 1988) suggests that the usually a observed decline of contributions in public

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