Cooperation in Partnerships: The Role of Breakups and Reputation

Abstract

for their input and great work. Mickey Chan's invaluable research assistance is gratefully acknowledged. Mickey implemented the Stable Mariage Mechanism in Z-Tree, which was quite tricky.

Pledges of Commitment and Cooperation in Partnerships

“…In regrouping phases, subjects choose whether to stay in their current partnership or to dissolve the partnership and be rematched to a new partner. Subjects whose partnership has been dissolved are rematched to new partners according to their preferences using the stable marriage mechanism ( [8]).…”

“…1 The review articles [2,3] provides excellent surveys of the existing literature on public goods game experiments and various modifications that aid or hinder sustaining cooperation in this environment. 2 Previous studies of endogenous group formation [4][5][6][7][8] find that the introduction of endogenous group formation increases cooperation and welfare when compared to exogenous regrouping protocols (see [9] for an exception to this result). Our focus is different: we ask whether the addition of pledges of commitment in an endogenous group formation setting can provide additional increases in cooperation and welfare.…”

Play It Again: Partner Choice, Reputation Building and Learning From Finitely Repeated Dilemma Games

“…Differences of design yield differences of outcome in the lab. Groups may be of fixed size (four in Page et al (2005); two in Coricelli et al (2004); Bayer (2011) and the present article) or of variable size (Ehrhart and Keser, 1999;Ahn et al, 2008Ahn et al, , 2009Charness and Yang, 2014). Both sides of each match can have a say about playing together (Page et al (2005), Bayer (2011), this article, some treatments in Coricelli et al (2004); Ahn et al (2008Ahn et al ( , 2009)) or individuals can join others' groups at will (Ehrhart and Keser (1999), some treatments in Ahn et al (2008Ahn et al ( , 2009).…”

“…Both sides of each match can have a say about playing together (Page et al (2005), Bayer (2011), this article, some treatments in Coricelli et al (2004); Ahn et al (2008Ahn et al ( , 2009)) or individuals can join others' groups at will (Ehrhart and Keser (1999), some treatments in Ahn et al (2008Ahn et al ( , 2009). Details of the matching process also differfor instance, a second price auction is used in Coricelli et al (2004), a Gale-Shapley stable marriage mechanism in Bayer (2011), majority or plurality voting in Ahn et al (2008Ahn et al ( , 2009) and Charness and Yang (2014), and a simple ranking and group assignment mechanism shared by Page et al (2005) and the present article. 3 Our focus on reputation and partner choice make the nature of the information subjects receive critical.…”

“…3 Our focus on reputation and partner choice make the nature of the information subjects receive critical. While subjects in all of the above experiments learn of at least the most recent decisions of prospective partners, the persistence of reputation differs, from learning of contributions in the most recent periods only, in Ahn et al (2008), Bayer (2011, and Charness and Yang (2014), to seeing others' entire past average contributions, in Page et al (2005) and Coricelli et al (2004).…”