Living in Two Neighborhoods - Social Interactions in the Lab

Armin Falk, Urs Fischbacher and Simon G�chter
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Gächter

No 150, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Field evidence suggests that agents belonging to the same group tend to behave similarly, i.e., behavior exhibits social interaction effects. Testing for such effects raises severe identification problems. We conduct an experiment that avoids these problems. The main design feature is that each subject simultaneously is a member of two randomly assigned and economically identical groups where only members (�neighbors�) are different. In both groups subjects make contribution decisions to a public good. We speak of social interactions if the same subject at the same time makes group-specific contributions that depend on their respective neighbors� contribution. Our results are unambiguous evidence for social interactions. A majority of subjects is very strongly influenced by the contributions of their respective neighbors. Roughly ten percent exhibit no social interactions.

Keywords: Social interactions; identification; experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 H26 H41 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp, nep-law and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Living in Two Neighborhoods: Social Interactions in the Lab (2004)
Working Paper: Living in Two Neighborhoods – Social Interactions in the LAB (2003)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:150

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