The Role of Responsibility in Strategic Risk-Taking

Gary Charness and Matthew Jackson

University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series from Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara

Abstract: We explore play between groups where one member of each 2-person group dictates the play of that group and is therefore responsible for the payoff of the other group member. We compare this to play when the game is the same, but each person is playing only for herself. Consistent with the principle of responsibility-alleviation described in Charness (2000), we find that a sense of responsibility for the welfare of others has an effect. While the issue of responsibility does not appear to influence the decisions of 2/3 of the population, almost 90 percent of the remaining 1/3 of the population plays a less risky strategy when choosing for a group than when playing only for herself.

Keywords: Equilibrium Selection; Responsibility; Risk-taking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-10-21
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Journal Article: The role of responsibility in strategic risk-taking (2009)
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