Public Goods, Social Norms and Naive Beliefs

Edward John Cartwright () and Amrish Patel ()

Studies in Economics from Department of Economics, University of Kent

Abstract: An individual’s contribution to a public good may be seen by others as a signal of attributes such as generosity or wealth. An individual may, therefore, choose their contribution so as to send an appropriate signal to others. In this paper we question how the inferences made by others will influence the amount contributed to the public good. Evidence suggests that individuals are naive and biased towards taking things at "face value". We contrast, therefore, contributions made to a public good if others are expected to make rational inferences versus contributions if others are expected to make naive inferences.

Keywords: signalling; naive beliefs; public goods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D8 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-pbe and nep-soc
Date: 2008-05
View list of references

Downloads: (external link)
ftp://ftp.ukc.ac.uk/pub/ejr/RePEc/ukc/ukcedp/0807.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ukc:ukcedp:0807

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Studies in Economics from Department of Economics, University of Kent
Address: Department of Economics, University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7NP
Series data maintained by Emma Robinson ().