This paper provides a new way to identify conditional cooperationin a real-time version of the standard voluntary contribution mechanism. Ourapproach avoids most drawbacks of the traditional procedures because it relieson endogenous cycle lengths, which are defined by the number of contributors...

We use a two-person public goods experiment to distinguish betweene±ciency and fairness as possible motivations for cooperative behavior.Asymmetric marginal per capita returns allow only the high-productivityplayer to increase group payo®s when contributing positive amounts....

Similar to Levati and Neugebauer (2001), a clock is used by which participantscan vary their individual contributions for voluntarily providing apublic good. As time goes by, participants either in(de)crease their contributiongradually or keep it constant. Groups of two poorly and two...

We conducted a laboratory study with a public goods game in which contributions are notsubmitted all at once but incrementally as coordinated in real time by a clock. Individualspress a button as soon as the clock equals their willingness to contribute. This publicgoods institution exploits the...

Idiosyncratic risk attitudes are usually assumed to be commonly knownand restricted to own payos. However, the alternatives faced by a decisionmaker often involve risks for others' payos as well. Motivated by theimportance of other-regarding preferences in social interactions, this paperexplores...

We study the effects of leadership on the private provision of a public good when group members are heterogeneously endowed. Leadership is implemented as a sequential public goods game where one group member contributes first and all the others follow. Our results show that the presence of a...

Costly signaling of commitment to a group has been proposed as an explanation forparticipation in religion and ritual. But if the signal’s cost is too small, freeriders willsend the signal and behave selfishly later. Effective signaling may then be prohibitivelycostly. If the average level of...

In a two-person finitely repeated public goods experiment, we use intentionsdata to interpret individual behavior. Based on a random-utilitymodel specification, we develop a relationship between a player's beliefsabout others' behavior and his contributions' plans, and use this relationshipto...

We report on an experiment designed to explore whether allowing individualsto voice their anger prevents costly punishment. For this sake, weuse an ultimatum minigame and distinguish two treatments: one in whichresponders can only accept or reject the o®er, and the other in which theycan also...

We experimentally examine how group identity affects trust behaviorin an investment game. In one treatment, group identity isinduced purely by minimal groups. In other treatments, group membersare additionally related by outcome interdependence establishedin a prior public goods game. Moving...