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Institutions Fostering Public Goods Provision

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Abstract

“Never do an experiment on public good provision or the ultimatum game!” This advice was given by a senior colleague to a young mathematician (BR) joining the Selten group at the Bonn Laboratory in the late 1980s. A well-meant advice to someone entering the field of experimental economics, grounded in the colleague’s observation that simple games, like ultimatum, dictator or prisoners’ dilemma games have already been subject to numerous experimental studies and that more complicated settings are non-tractable. For hand-run experiments the degree of complexity seemed very restricted and computerized experiments faced serious technical limitations at that time. Today, more than 20 years later, we can look back to numerous intriguing new insights that have been gained through additional public-goods and ultimatum experiments. Some of them will be reviewed in this paper and some of them are co-authored by the formerly young mathematician who did not follow the advice of the senior colleague. Undisputable, technical progress has enriched our possibilities for handling richer and more complex games and experimental settings. This, however, is at best a necessary requirement.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “This is not forbidden, nich”.

  2. 2.

    “You are much too young to do such stupid things”, answer given to an advice seeking PhD-student at the summer school in Stony Brook in the early 1990s.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Blümlisalpstrasse 10, CH-8006, Zürich, Switzerland

    Ernst Fehr

  2. University of Nottingham, Sir Clive Granger Building, University Park, Nottingham, NG7 2RD, UK

    Simon Gächter

  3. Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, August-Thienemann-Str. 2, 24306, Plön, Germany

    Manfred Milinski

  4. Universität Erfurt, 900 221, 99105, Erfurt, Germany

    Bettina Rockenbach

Authors
  1. Ernst Fehr
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  2. Simon Gächter
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  3. Manfred Milinski
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  4. Bettina Rockenbach
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bettina Rockenbach .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Magdeburg, Otto-von-Guericke-Universität, Magdeburg, 39106, Germany

    Abdolkarim Sadrieh

  2. Staatswissenschaftliches, (Volkswirtschaftliches) Seminar, Universität Köln, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, Köln, 50923, Germany

    Axel Ockenfels

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Fehr, E., Gächter, S., Milinski, M., Rockenbach, B. (2010). Institutions Fostering Public Goods Provision. In: Sadrieh, A., Ockenfels, A. (eds) The Selten School of Behavioral Economics. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13983-3_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-13983-3_11

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