Cooperation is a pervasive social phenomenon but more often than not economic theories have little to say about its causes and consequences. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that cooperative behaviour might be motivated by purely selfish interest when the “social” payoff in a game is increasing. We report the results of a series of experiments on the centipede game. The experiments are organized in two subsequent steps. Subjects first participate in a 2-period trust game, randomly matched with unknown partners. We apply the strategy method in order to elicit their social preferences. On the basis of their pre-game behaviour, individuals are divided into three main social groups: selfish individuals, pure altruists and reciprocators. At the second step of the experiment, subjects play a repeated 6-move centipede game with increasing final payoff. Each subject plays twice in a low stake and in a high centipede game, and he/she is informed about his/her co-player social preferences. We identify the origin of cooperation within homogeneous and heterogeneous social groups.
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Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number
3701.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
Roland Bénabou & Jean Tirole, 2004.
"Incentives and Prosocial Behavior,"
Working Papers
137, Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Discussion Papers in Economics..
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