Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/248605 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
ISER Discussion Paper No. 1146
Publisher: 
Osaka University, Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER), Osaka
Abstract: 
A growing body of literature in experimental economics examines how cognitive ability affects cooperation in social dilemma settings. We contribute to the existing literature by studying this relationship in a more complex and strategic environment when the number of partners increases in an infinitely repeated public goods game. We designed four treatments with different continuation probability under two conditions: whether cooperation can be sustained as risk dominance or not. We asked participants to decide whether to cooperate in every period in the first five rounds. They were further asked to decide if they should elicit their strategy at the beginning of each super game using the strategy method in the last five rounds. We found that participants with greater cognitive abilities cooperated more (less) when cooperation could(not) be sustained as risk dominance. A similar trend was observed in the frequency of fully cooperative strategies. We also found that participants with greater cognitive abilities employed lenient and forgiving strategies more frequently when the continuation probability was far higher than the risk dominant threshold level.
Subjects: 
cognitive ability
infinitely repeated game
public goods game
risk dominance
strategy method
JEL: 
C72
C73
C91
C92
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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