The Spread of Free-Riding Behavior in a Social Network

Dunia López-Pintado ()
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Dunia López-Pintado: Departamento de Economía, Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Sevilla, Spain.
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Dunia Lopez Pintado

Eastern Economic Journal, 2008, vol. 34, issue 4, 464-479

Abstract: We propose a model where agents located in a social network decide whether or not to exert effort to provide a local public good. We assume that they have strong incentives to free-ride on their neighbors’ effort decisions. We characterize the equilibria of the induced game. We also study a mean-field dynamics in which agents choose in each period the best response to the last period's decisions of their neighbors. We characterize the fraction of free-riders in the stable state of such a dynamics and show how it depends on properties of the degree distribution. Eastern Economic Journal (2008) 34, 464–479. doi:10.1057/eej.2008.30

Date: 2008
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Working Paper: The Spread of Free-Riding Behavior in a Social Network (2007)
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