Published April 1988
| public
Journal Article
Private incentives in social dilemmas: The effects of incomplete information and altruism
- Creators
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Palfrey, Thomas R.
- Rosenthal, Howard
Abstract
This paper analyzes the provision of discrete public goods when individuals have altruistic preferences which others do not precisely know. The problem is formulated and solved as a Bayesian game. In contrast to standard social psychological approaches, based on such natural language terms as greed, fear, and trust, the Bayesian approach provides a rigorous mathematical treatment of social participation. This theory is shown to make strong testable predictions that can integrate data collected across a wide variety of natural and experimental settings. The altruism model is shown to be supported by existing experimental data on binary voluntary contribution games.
Additional Information
© 1988 Elsevier B.V. Received December 1985, revised version received March 1988. Both authors gratefully acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation. Professor Palfrey also wishes to thank the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Exxon Education Foundation for their financial support. We benefited from comments from the referees and from seminar participants at Stanford University, University of Texas at Austin and Washington University.Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 65001
- DOI
- 10.1016/0047-2727(88)90035-7
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160303-102157237
- NSF
- Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
- Exxon Education Foundation
- Created
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2016-03-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers