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排他性追求可能产生效率低下的总体结果。公共物品环境和公共资源环境是两种典型的社会环境，在这两种环境中，社会困境表现为搭便车和公地悲剧。在公共产品博弈中，个人决定他们的禀赋中有多少用于公共产品。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，如果决策者不合作，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提供公共产品不足和过度利用公共资源的倾向方面的有效性。然而，以前的研究并没有集中在这些设置中的权力不对称的影响。这里提出的研究开始于代理同时移动的设置，而不知道其他代理的行动。这些设置是为成对比较而设计的，其中替代策略的回报结果在不同治疗中保持不变。这种初步的分析使我们能够检查跨公共产品和共同池设置的行为差异，这些差异与行为规范的不对称性有关，而不是策略的回报后果的差异。然后，研究移动到实验对顺序移动游戏中，第二个不对称的权力作出决定后，第一个移动。这些“老板和国王”利用合作选择的第一个行动者的机会是系统地不同的设计设置。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会对先行者的合作意愿产生重大影响。我们研究这些影响是否在成对的公共产品和共同池资源设置不同。这项研究提供了重要的见解，社区集体行动如何关键取决于设计的机构，允许透明度，以及控制剥削权力与代理人的行政控制。它还将产生重要的见解，决策者的行为规范如何可能是重要的社会困境的结构，以及这些规范如何与旨在促进合作的机构相互作用。

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.