The dynamics of behavior observed in standard public-good experiments can be explained by imperfect conditional cooperation combined with social learning (Fischbacher and Gächter, 2010). But it is unclear what determines first-round contributions. We argue that first-round contributions depend...

Based on contribution patterns to parties in Germany and elsewhere, we suggest that European democracies should use a mixed system where private funding can play a larger role than public funding. In Germany the high level of public funding for parties can be reduced without expecting...

Previous research has shown that opportunities for two-sided partner choice in finitely repeated social dilemma games can promote cooperation through a combination of sorting and opportunistic signaling, with late period defections by selfish players causing an end-game decline. How such...

The public goods problem or the “tragedy of the commons,” (Hardin, 1968) either viewed as a problem of extraction or that of contribution has had a rich history in Economics and indeed in other social sciences like Anthropology, Sociology and Political Science. Our research examines free...

The performance of groups has been thoroughly investigated in experimental economics, showing that groups are overall more rational deciders than individuals. However, superior group performance in economic experiments has primarily been shown for face-toface decision making, which has ceased to...