We examine the characteristics of effective leaders in a simple leader-follower voluntary contributions game. We focus on two factors: the individual's cooperativeness and the individual's beliefs about the cooperativeness of others. We find that groups perform best when led by those who are...

We investigate whether there is a link between conditional cooperation and betrayal aversion. We use a public goods game to classify subjects by type of contribution preference and by belief about the contributions of others; and we measure betrayal aversion for different categories of subject....

We study the effect of group size on cooperation in voluntary contribution mechanism games. As in previous experiments, we study four- and eight-person groups in high and low marginal per capita return (MPCR) conditions. We find a positive effect of group size in the low MPCR condition, as in...

We experimentally investigate how different information about others' individual contributions affects conditional cooperators' willingness to cooperate in a one-shot linear public goods game. We find that when information about individual contributions is provided, contributions are generally...

This paper studies a simple process of demand adjustment in cooperative games. In the process, a randomly chosen player makes the highest possible demand subject to the demands of other coalition members being satisfied. This process converges to the aspiration set; in convex games, this implies...

This paper studies an extensive form game of coalition formation with random proposers in games with externalities. It is shown that an agreement will be reached without delay if any set of coalitions profits from merging. Even under this strong condition, the equilibrium coalition structure is...

We examine how conditional cooperation is related to the material payoffs in a Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma experiment. We have subjects play eight SPDs with varying payoffs, systematically varying the material gain to the second-mover and the material loss to the first-mover when the...

Communication has been regarded as one of the most effective devices in promoting team cooperation. But asymmetric communication sometimes breeds collusion and is detrimental to team efficiency. Here, we present experimental evidence showing that excluding one member from team communication...

We experimentally examine how the incentive to defect in a social dilemma affects conditional cooperation. In our first study we conduct online experiments in which subjects play eight Sequential Prisoner's Dilemma games with payoffs systematically varied across games. We find that few second...