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Published September 1996 | public
Journal Article

Altruism, reputation and noise in linear public goods experiments

Abstract

We report an experiment using a design that permits the direct measurement of individual decision rules in voluntary contribution games. We estimate the distribution of altruism in our subjects and find that observed 'overcontribution' is attributable to a combination of random variation in behavior and a few altruistic players. We also employ Andreoni's partners/strangers design to measure reputation effects. The only difference observed is that the strangers treatment produces slightly more random variation in behavior. Our results explain some anomalies about contribution rates, and support past findings that reputation-building plays a minor role in such experiments.

Additional Information

Copyright © 1996 Published by Elsevier B.V. Received March 1994; revised version received July 1994. We acknowledge the financial support of the National Science Foundation (SBR-9223701) and the Ministerio de Education y Ciencia (DGICYT PB91- 0810). We thank Estela Hopenhayn for assistance in preparing and conducting the experiments. Antonio Rangel helped with the translation of instructions from English. We are grateful to our colleagues at both Caltech and Pompeu Fabra for their advice, with speciai thanks to Antoni Bosch. The comments from two referees are gratefully acknowledged.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 17, 2023