Abstract
Generally, with a standard linear public goods game, one observes at the aggregate level that contributions lay between the Nash equilibrium and the social optimum and decrease over time with and end-effect. The purpose of this paper is to see whether these general aggregate results remain available at the group and at the individual levels.
At this purpose, six groups of four persons were formed and made to play a public goods game. At the aggregate level, it was found that obtained results corresponded almost to the standard experimental findings in the literature.
Using the classification by Isaac, Walker and Thomas ({dy1984}), it was found that at the group level only two groups adopted the standard behaviour and only two groups presented a behaviour similar to what it was obtained at the aggregate level.
At the individual level, contributions over time of each subject to the group were compared to the aggregate results and classified into types. Only in one of the six groups individuals adopted an homogeneous behaviour, meantime in the other five groups individuals conducted different behaviours.
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Author is indebted to Alan Kirman for the supervision of this work and to Sylvie Thoron for her helpful advises. He also thanks Jordi Brandts for his help during his stay in Barcelona and Antoni Bosch for making theLeeX available for him.
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Hichri, W. The individual behaviour in a public goods game. Int Rev Public Nonprofit Mark 2, 59–71 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02893251
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02893251