The Blues Goes On But When Does It Stop? Public Goods Experiments with Non-Definite and Non-Commonly Known Time Horizons

Luis G. Gonzalez (), Werner Gueth () and Maria Vittoria Levati ()
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Werner Güth ()

Discussion Papers on Strategic Interaction from Max Planck Institute of Economics, Strategic Interaction Group

Abstract: A robust finding of repeated public goods experiments is that high initial contribution rates sharply decline towards the end. This paper reports on an exploratory experiment designed to discover whether such a decline is simply triggered by the usual experimental practice of publicly informing participants about the exact number of periods to be played. The experiment compares punctual to interval information about the number of repetitions, whereby interval information can be privately or commonly known as well as symmetric or asymmetric. The results indicate that, while the overall average contribution levels do not change significantly across treatments, asymmetric information about the time horizon reduces the frequency of end-game effects.

Keywords: public goods experiment; end game effect; common knowledge; asymmetric information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D82 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-pbe
Date: Written 2004-03
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