Individual evolutionary learning, other-regarding preferences, and the voluntary contributions mechanism

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Arifovic, Jasmina; Ledyard, John
• 署名单位: California Institute of Technology; Simon Fraser University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2012.05.013
• 发表日期: 2012
• 页码: 808-823
• 关键词: Public goods; Voluntary contribution mechanism; other-regarding preferences; learning; Conditional cooperation; RECIPROCITY

摘要

The data from experiments with the Voluntary Contributions Mechanism suggest five stylized facts, including the restart effect. To date, no theory has explained all of these facts simultaneously. We merge our Individual Evolutionary Learning model with a variation of heterogeneous other-regarding preferences and a distribution of types to provide a new theory that does. In addition, our theory answers some open questions concerning the data on partners-strangers experiments. One interesting feature of the theory is that being a conditional cooperator is not a type but arises endogenously as a behavior. The data generated by our model are quantitatively similar to data from a variety of experiments, and experimenters, and are insensitive to moderate variations in the parameters of the model. That is, we have a robust explanation for most behavior in VCM experiments. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.