Collaborative Research: Asymmetric Power in Paired Common Pool and Public Good Games: Experiments, Institutions, and Behavior

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。社会困境的特点是，在这种环境中，个人对自身物质利益的独家追求可能产生低效的总结果。这两种环境以公共产品和公共资源为特征，其中社会困境可以表现为搭便车和公地结果的悲剧。在公共物品博弈中，个人决定他们的捐赠有多少贡献给公共物品。在公共池资源博弈中，个人决定从公共池中提取多少。在这两种情况下，如果决策者采取不合作的行动，群体资源就会受到破坏。许多实地和实验室研究都集中在替代性政治经济制度在抵消个人倾向于提供公共产品不足和过度开发公共资源方面的有效性。然而，之前的研究并没有关注这些情况下权力不对称的影响。这里提出的研究从智能体同时移动的设置开始，不知道其他智能体的行为。这些设置是为两两比较而设计的，在这种比较中，不同策略的收益结果在不同的处理中保持不变。这一初步分析使我们能够检查公共利益和公共池设置之间的行为差异，这些差异与行为规范的不对称有关，而不是策略收益结果的差异。然后，研究转向对连续移动游戏的实验，在这些游戏中，具有不对称权力的第二移动者在第一个移动者之后做出决定。这些“老板和国王”利用先行者的合作选择的机会在不同的设计环境中是不同的。核心问题是，与这些老板和国王相关的权力是否会导致剥削，以及这种权力在多大程度上对先行者的合作意愿产生重大影响。我们研究了这些影响是否在配对的公共物品和公共资源池设置中有所不同。这项研究提供了重要的见解，说明社区集体行动如何关键地依赖于允许透明度的制度设计，以及对与行政控制相关的代理人的剥削权力的控制。它还将对决策者的行为规范如何与社会困境的结构有重要联系以及这些规范如何与旨在促进合作的制度相互作用产生重要见解。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). Social dilemmas characterize environments in which individuals' exclusive pursuit of their own material self-interest can produce inefficient aggregate outcomes. Two such environments are those characterized by public goods and common pool resources, in which the social dilemmas can be manifested in free riding and tragedy of the commons outcomes. In public goods games, individuals decide how much of their endowments to contribute to the public good. In common-pool resource games, individuals decide how much to withdraw from the common-pool. In both settings, group resources are undermined if decision makers act non-cooperatively. Much field and laboratory research has focused on the effectiveness of alternative political-economic institutions in counteracting individuals' tendencies to under-provide public goods and over-exploit common pool resources. Previous research, however, has not focused on the implications of power asymmetries in these settings. The research proposed here begins with settings in which agents move simultaneously, without knowledge of other agents' actions. The settings are designed for pair-wise comparisons in which payoff consequences of alternative strategies are held constant across treatments. This initial analysis allows us to examine behavioral differences across public good and common pool settings that are linked to asymmetries in norms of behavior, as opposed to differences in payoff consequences of strategies. The research then moves to experiments with pairs of sequential move games in which second movers with asymmetric power make their decisions after first movers. The opportunities for these "bosses and kings" to exploit cooperative choices of first movers is systematically varied across design settings. The central questions are whether the powers associated with these bosses and kings lead to exploitation, and to what extent this power has significant effects on the willingness of first movers to behave cooperatively. We examine whether these effects differ across the paired public good and common pool resource settings. This research provides important insights into how community collective action depends critically on the design of institutions that allows for transparency, as well as control over the exploitive powers associated with agents with administrative control. It will also yield important insights into how decision makers' norms of behavior may be importantly linked to the structure of the social dilemma and how such norms interact with institutions designed to facilitate cooperation.