Experimental Economics Lecture Series

 

Spring 2010


 

                          Science of Liberty


Friday, 4:00pm - 5:30pm 
 

  reception following







Ethnicity, Community and Local Public Good Provision

University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Abstract: We conduct a field experiment with 571 African-American and Hispanic subjects to investigate the impacts that ethnicity and community characteristics (including racial or ethnic heterogeneity) have on the willingness of individuals to voluntarily provide local public goods. We use experiments to measure preferences for cooperation, risk, and time and then use these to help explain the willingness of individuals to contribute to local public goods, specifically the willingness to contribute to local charities that provide health, children’s education, and job training services. The evidence indicates that the observed differences between African-Americans and Hispanics in our sample are largely driven by differences in beliefs of others’ provision and patience across the two populations. This research further confirms the value in using experiments to measure preferences in the field.

 

 

Guillaume R. Fréchette

New York University

The Evolution of Cooperation in Infinitely Repeated Games: Experimental Evidence

Abstract: A usual criticism of the theory of infinitely repeated games is that it does not provide sharp predictions since there may be a multiplicity of equilibria. To address this issue we present experimental evidence on the evolution of cooperation in infinitely repeated prisoners&r squo; dilemma games as subjects gain experience. We find that cooperation decreases with experience when it cannot be supported as an equilibrium outcome. More interestingly, the converse is not necessarily true: cooperation does not always increase with experience when it can be supported as an equilibrium outcome. Nor is a more stringent condition, risk dominance, sufficient for cooperation to arise. However, subjects do learn to cooperate when the payoff to cooperation and the importance of the future is high enough. These results have important implications for the theory of infinitely repeated games. While we show that cooperation may prevail in infinitely repeated games, the conditions under which this occurs are more stringent than the sub-game perfect conditions usually considered.