Playing with the Good Guys: A Public Good Game with Endogenous Group Formation

In public good games, voluntary contributions tend to start o high and decline as the game is repeated. If high contributors are matched, however, contributions tend to stay high. We propose a formalization predicting that high contributors will selfselect into groups committed to charitable giving. Testing this experimentally, we let subjects choose between two group types, where one type donate a xed amount to a charity. Contributions in these groups stayed high, whereas contributions in the other groups showed the well known declining pattern. One implication is that corporate social responsibility may attract more responsible employees.