We report the results of an experimental study that compares voting mechanismsin the provision of public goods. Subjects can freely decide how much they want tocontribute. Whether the public good is finally provided is decided by a referendumunder full information about all contributions. If...

In this paper we investigate the effects of local interaction in a CPR-like environment.We employ a local interaction model where subjects are allocated alonga circle and only interact with their most direct neighbors. In traditional socialdilemma experiments, the return of one’s actions is...

This paper studies the effect of introducing costly partner selection for the voluntarycontribution to a public good. Subjects participate in six sequences offive rounds of a two-person public good game in partner design. At the end ofeach sequence, subjects can select a new partner out of six...

We consider a society composed of two regions. Each of them pro-vides a public good whose benefits reach beyond local boundaries.In case of decentralization, taxes collected by members of a regionare spent only on that region's public good. In case of centralization, tax receipts from the two...

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...

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...

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...

In a public goods experiment, subjects can vary over a period of stochasticlength two contribution levels: one is publicly observable (their cheap talkstated intention), while the other is not seen by the others (their secretintention). When the period suddenly stops, participants are restricted...

We examine the effects of leading by example in voluntary contributionexperiments. Leadership is implemented by letting one group membercontribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadershipincreases contributions in comparison to the standard voluntary contributionmechanism,...