Autori
Hey, John D.
Burland, Roberto

Titolo
Do anglo-saxons free-ride more?
Periodico
Università degli studi di Torino. Dip. Di Economia e Statistica Cognetti de Martiis. Working paper series
Anno: 1995 - Fascicolo: 14 - Pagina iniziale: 1 - Pagina finale: 18

We report on experiments replicating Andreoni's (1988) Partners and Strangers design which came up with couterintuitive results. We show, like Weimann (1994), that his results are not robust to replication, but we finf some evidence that may help to accommodate the diverging partners/strangers results. This finding comes out a preliminary investigation into whether nationality makes a difference as far as free-riding is concerned. We seem to have identified a strong effect on behaviour resulting from national differences(which, in turn, presumably reflect cultural and sociological differences between subject groups), both on average contribution an, possibility, on the attitude toward playing in stranger or partner sessions. Our findings confirm the general impression that differences in behaviour between partner and stranger sessions might be relatively minor, and be swamped by other differences, particularly nationality. From our own results the strong effect of nationality on average contribution and, possibility, on the relevance of the partners-strangers distinction seems to point out the existence (and relevance) of different social norms in different cultural and social contexts. We olso explore the influence of a change to Public Bads and further investigate Andreoni's Restart Effect which received only cursory treatment in Andreoni (and none in Weimann) and find some very strong effects. Our results both in the final rounds and especially in the restart indicate that learning requires much more time and trial than expected, and does not seem to provide a full explanation of the observed behaviour.




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