Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/98458 
Year of Publication: 
2013
Series/Report no.: 
Jena Economic Research Papers No. 2013-045
Publisher: 
Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena
Abstract: 
In the two-person sequential best shot game, first player 1 contributes to a public good and then player 2 is informed about this choice before contributing. The payoff from the public good is the same for both players and depends only on the maximal contribution. Efficient voluntary cooperation in the repeated best shot game therefore requires that only one player should contribute in a given round. To provide better chances for such cooperation, we enrich the sequential best shot base game by a third stage allowing the party with the lower contribution to transfer some of its periodic gain to the other party. Participants easily establish cooperation in the finitely repeated game. When cooperation evolves, it mostly takes the form of labor division with one participant constantly contributing and the other constantly compensating. However, in a treatment in which compensation is not possible, (more or less symmetric) alternating occurs frequently and turns out to be almost as efficient as labor division.
Subjects: 
best shot game
coordination
experiment
transfer
JEL: 
C71
C73
C91
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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