We aim to investigate whether trust is mainly influenced by pro-social concerns or by risk-related issues. In a within-subjects framework, we elicit subjects’ other regarding attitude as well as preference towards risk via respectively the ring test (Griesinger and Livingston [1973]) and the Holt and Laury test [2002]. These measures are then exploited in two different sorts of giving games: (i) a standard trust game, which – by construction – embodies a dimension of risk (i.e. the transfer-back from the receiver to the sender), and (ii) a (triple) dictator game in which the component of risk is removed. The measures of other regarding preferences and risk preferences were also used to explain the gaps of transfer due to strategic anticipation. The results show that giving behavior in trust game is driven by other regarding preferences and not by risk-related considerations. However, we find no significant correlation between the gaps of transfer and both social and risk preferences.Dans une expérience en laboratoire, nous cherchons à déterminer si la confiance est plutôt fondée sur l’attention à l’autre ou sur la prise de risque. Nous élicitons les préférences sociales des participants avec le test dit « de l’anneau » (Griesinger et Livingston [1973]) et les préférences pour le risque avec le test de Holt et Laury [2002]. Ces mesures sont ensuite exploitées dans deux versions du jeu de l’investissement : (i) la version standard, qui, par construction, intègre une part de risque (à travers l’anticipation stratégique d’un retour sur investissement) et ii) une autre version (appelée « jeu du dictateur triple » dans la littérature) dans laquelle cette part de risque est éliminée. Les mesures issues des tests d’élicitation des préférences sont aussi utilisées pour expliquer les écarts entre les montants investis dans les deux jeux. Les résultats de l’expérience montrent que ce sont plutôt les préférences sociales qui fondent les comportements d’investissement. En revanche, les écarts entre les montants investis et les mesures des préférences ne sont pas corrélés

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An important issue facing marketing cooperatives is that the overall quality of the product depends on the quality of farm products provided by individual members. We conduct an experiment to empirically investigate producer incentives to free‐ride on quality among the members of a marketing cooperative in a setting where the average quality provided by cooperative members results in a collective rent that is distributed back to members in a patronage dividend levied in proportion to the quantity produced. Hidden actions by cooperative members that impact quality are imperfectly monitored, but free‐riding, when detected, results in exclusion from cooperative returns. The randomized payoff structure of our game results in a novel experimental design that nests public good games and multi‐player assurance games. Our findings indicate that free‐riding on product quality is deterred when (a) cooperatives base patronage dividends on quality outcomes of smaller groups; (b) payoffs from free‐riding are randomized by the possibility of exclusion from cooperative returns; and (c) cooperatives distribute a larger share of returns to members through indirect payments such as capital pooling and cost‐sharing arrangements unrelated to product quality.

In this paper, we examine the question of whether a collective activity can influence cooperation in a subsequent repeated one-shot prisoner's dilemma ( PD) game. We conduct two series of experiments. The first consists of control experiments in which 30 periods of a PD game are played, with a random rematching of the pairs in every period. In a second series of experiments, subjects first play a donation game (DG) and then the PD game. In the DG, they collectively discuss the amount of a donation to a given charity, before putting the question to an individual and anonymous vote. Cooperation levels in the PD games preceded by the DG are significantly lower than those observed in the control experiment.JEL classification: C72, C91, C92.

We investigate how people trade off between equity and efficiency, using variations of tripled dictator and trust games in a lab experiment. Equalizing payoffs reduces the return from the tripled investment in the dictator game. In contrast, in the trust game both equal and maximized payoffs can be achieved, provided that receiver transfers back half of the return from investment. We find that subjects sacrifice efficiency for equity in the dictator game but manage to achieve both in the trust game. Most subjects equalize payoffs when they are placed behind a veil of ignorance about their position in the trust game, regardless of their aversion to risk. They invest less when they pay to obtain their position as investor but do not send back less if they pay to be the receiver. Subjects who modify their investment decision after receiving information about the average investment in their group tend to move closer to the average.

We study experimentally a coordination game with N heterogeneous individuals under different information treatments. We explore the effects of information on the emergence of Pareto-efficient outcomes, by means of a gradual decrease of the information content provided to the players in successive experiments. We observe that successful coordination is possible with private information alone, although not on a Pareto-optimal equilibrium. Reinforcement-based learning models reproduce the qualitative trends of the experimental results.

In a laboratory experiment we test three regulations imposed on a common-pool resource game with heterogeneous users: an access fee and subsidy scheme, transferable quotas and non-transferable quotas. We calibrate the game so that all regulations improve users’ profits compared to free-access extraction. We compare the regulations according to five criteria: resource preservation, individual profits, profit difference, Pareto-improvement from free-access and sorting of the most efficient users. One of the main findings is that, even though it performs better in sorting out the most efficient subjects, the fee and subsidy scheme is not more profitable than tradable quotas

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