The Public Goods Game Sample Clauses

The Public Goods Game. In a public goods game, players simultaneously decide how much of an initial endowment they would like to invest in a public project. Keeping a portion of one’s endowment is like contributing to a private fund with a constant marginal return equal to 1, whereas contributing to the group project has a constant marginal return equal to 0.5. Thus, the payoff function for each subject, i, is equal to the following expression: !i = (xi " ci )+ 0.5#cj j=1 Where πi and ci represent subject i’s payoff and contribution to the group fund, respectively with i and j =1, 2, 3, or 4.51 In the public goods game, it is a dominant strategy to contribute nothing to the group fund, as portions of the endowment one keeps 50 See Xxxxxxx (2003) for a review of the dictator game literature. 51 Two sessions of this game had groups of 5 subjects because the size of TI:GER groups increased from 4 to 5 in 2009. for oneself are worth more than those contributed to the group. Free-riding will dominate in this game unless there is both trust and trustworthiness.52 Before beginning the public goods game, TI:GER students were informed that they would be grouped with their TI:GER teammates.53 Control subjects were told they would play this game with three other people in their same room.