Anomalies: Cooperation
- 1 August 1988
- journal article
- Published by American Economic Association in Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Vol. 2 (3) , 187-197
- https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.2.3.187
Abstract
Much economic analysis -- and virtually all game theory -- starts with the assumption that people are both rational and selfish. The predictions derived from this assumption of rational selfishness are, however, violated in many familiar contexts. In this column and the next one, the evidence from laboratory experiments is examined to see what has been learned about when and why humans cooperate. This column considers the particularly important case of cooperation vs. free riding in the context of public good provision.Keywords
This publication has 11 references indexed in Scilit:
- Organizing Groups for Collective ActionAmerican Political Science Review, 1986
- On the private provision of public goodsJournal of Public Economics, 1986
- Public goods provision in an experimental environmentJournal of Public Economics, 1985
- Divergent evidence on free riding: An experimental examination of possible explanationsPublic Choice, 1984
- The free rider problem: Experimental evidencePublic Choice, 1984
- The Minimal Contributing Set as a Solution to Public Goods ProblemsAmerican Political Science Review, 1983
- Metamagical ThemasScientific American, 1983
- Rational cooperation in the finitely repeated prisoners' dilemmaJournal of Economic Theory, 1982
- Economists free ride, does anyone else?Journal of Public Economics, 1981
- The ?crowding-out? effect of governmental transfers on private charitable contributionsPublic Choice, 1978