Doctoral Dissertation Research: Ethnic Conflict and the Provision of Public Goods: A Framed Field Experiment

博士论文研究：民族冲突与公共产品的提供：框架性田野实验

• 批准号: 1058381
• 负责人: Andrew Schotter
• 金额: $ 0.5万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-15 至 2013-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1058381&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Ethnic; Conflict

In many developing countries, public goods are financed by means of voluntary donations or through costly lobbying activities that influence the pattern of low-level government expenditure. Such public goods include irrigation systems, schools, health facilities, access to drinking water, roads and so on. Many of these goods come in two versions: a "local" one which is fine-tuned to the nature of a social group (e.g., education with a religious or linguistic component), and a "global" version which may be less targeted in its ability to satisfy each group, but has more widespread benefits for the community at large. Indeed, the greater the underlying conflict or exclusion across social groups, the greater is the potential for local goods to come into existence: even an undifferentiated product which can be withheld from one sub-group (e.g., drinking water segregated by caste) acquires that status. A special case of a local public good is, of course, a private good, in which just one individual or household gets to enjoy the good, to the exclusion of all others.The potential tension between the provision of local and global public goods forms the subject matter of this research project. The standard theory of public goods provision does not make this distinction. Typically, agents contribute to a global public good consumed by the entire community. In contrast, this project investigates how the existence of local public goods affects social welfare, both in the presence and absence of conflict. It contributes to existing research in two ways. First, it adds to the understanding of how social heterogeneity affects the provision of public goods in a community. Second, it adds to the empirical literature on the effects of the in-group/out-group conflict on social choice and welfare. In general, the intensity of conflict between different ethnic groups in the community may affect the level of provision of public goods in the community and determine whether an enforcement of the production of a global public good will be welfare improving for the society. As the investigator demonstrates, introducing policies which encourage (or even mandate) global public goods provision can be potentially welfare improving in many ethnically or racially heterogeneous communities.In this paper, the researcher first introduces a new theoretical model which allows an individual to choose between the provision of local and global public goods by making a contribution to the preferred type of public good. Second, an experiment is carried out to test the theoretical predictions of the model in three different environments: one in which the experimental subjects are entirely neutral to one another, one in which there is a tendency for intergroup conflict, and one with a tendency for intergroup sympathy. These last two cases are created, first, by assigning subjects from different college fraternities to different groups, and second, by assigning subjects from the same fraternity to different groups. This procedure permits variation in the environment in which the individuals take decisions; from neutral to hostile to friendly. Such variation provides an opportunity to investigate if and to what extent potential conflict between the groups reduces the welfare of each individual in the community.As mentioned above, local public goods are restricted for the consumption of a particular social group that an agent belongs to, whereas global public goods can be consumed by anyone in the society. The theory predicts that in the absence of strong ethnic animosity between the groups an enforcement of global good production can have beneficial effects on the welfare of the entire community. That is, the theory presented in this paper demonstrates that the existence of local public goods may be detrimental to social welfare. The researcher employs naturally occurring and highly cohesive groups in the experiment, consisting of the members of different college fraternities, in order to induce conflict in the lab environment. Although inducing group identity artificially allows for a greater control over identity formation process, inducing inter-group conflict is difficult in the lab environment and the results of an experiment may poorly reflect the real-world conflict situation between two groups in an ethnically heterogeneous society. Therefore using fraternity groups in the experiment allows studying the effects of intergroup conflict on investment decisions and social welfare. The idea is that a group consisting of the members of one fraternity may not choose an action which maximizes both individual and social welfare, in order to reduce the other group's payoff. This irrational behavior, triggered by the rivalry that exists between different fraternities, suggests that a similar behavior may be expected of groups consisting of the members of different ethnic groups.The results of the experiment provide further insights into the effect of group identity on individual choice behavior and the subsequent effects on social welfare.

在许多发展中国家，公益物的资金来源是自愿捐款或影响低级别政府支出模式的昂贵游说活动。这些公共产品包括灌溉系统、学校、卫生设施、饮用水供应、道路等，其中许多产品有两种形式：一种是“当地”产品，根据社会群体的性质进行微调（例如，一种是“全球”版本，它在满足每个群体的能力方面可能不那么有针对性，但对整个社区有更广泛的好处。事实上，社会群体之间的潜在冲突或排斥越大，当地商品出现的可能性就越大：即使是一种可以从一个亚群体中保留下来的无差别产品（例如，按种姓隔离的饮用水）获得这一地位。当然，地方公共产品的一个特殊情况是私人产品，在这种情况下，只有一个人或一个家庭可以享受这种产品，而其他人则被排除在外。地方公共产品和全球公共产品之间的潜在紧张关系构成了本研究项目的主题。公共物品提供的标准理论并没有做出这种区分。通常情况下，代理人为整个社区消费的全球公共产品做出贡献。相比之下，该项目调查了在存在和不存在冲突的情况下，当地公共产品的存在如何影响社会福利。它以两种方式对现有的研究做出了贡献。首先，它增加了对社会异质性如何影响社区公共产品提供的理解。其次，它增加了经验文献的影响，内/外群体冲突的社会选择和福利。一般而言，社区中不同族裔群体之间冲突的激烈程度可能影响社区提供公共产品的水平，并决定强制生产全球公共产品是否会改善社会福利。正如研究者所证明的那样，引入鼓励（甚至强制）提供全球公共产品的政策可能会改善许多种族或种族异质community.In本文中，研究者首先介绍了一个新的理论模型，该模型允许个人通过对首选类型的公共产品做出贡献来选择提供本地和全球公共产品。其次，进行了一个实验，以测试在三个不同的环境中的模型的理论预测：一个实验对象是完全中立的，一个是在其中有一个倾向于组间冲突，一个倾向于组间同情。最后两种情况是这样产生的，第一种情况是将来自不同大学兄弟会的受试者分配到不同的组，第二种情况是将来自同一兄弟会的受试者分配到不同的组。这一程序允许个体做出决策的环境发生变化，从中立到敌对再到友好。这种差异提供了一个机会，以调查是否以及在何种程度上，群体之间的潜在冲突减少了社会中每个人的福利如上所述，当地的公共产品是有限的，一个代理人属于特定的社会群体的消费，而全球公共产品可以被社会中的任何人消费。该理论预测，在群体之间没有强烈的种族仇恨的情况下，全球商品生产的实施可以对整个社区的福利产生有益的影响。也就是说，本文提出的理论证明，地方公共物品的存在可能会损害社会福利。研究人员在实验中采用了自然发生的和高度凝聚力的群体，由不同大学兄弟会的成员组成，以诱导实验室环境中的冲突。虽然人为地诱导群体认同可以更好地控制认同形成过程，但在实验室环境中诱导群体间冲突是困难的，实验结果可能无法反映种族异质社会中两个群体之间的真实冲突情况。因此，在实验中使用兄弟会团体可以研究群体间冲突对投资决策和社会福利的影响。这个想法是，一个由一个兄弟会的成员组成的群体可能不会选择一个最大化个人和社会福利的行动，以减少另一个群体的收益。这种非理性行为是由不同的兄弟会之间存在的竞争所引发的，这表明由不同种族的成员组成的群体可能会有类似的行为。实验结果进一步揭示了群体认同对个人选择行为的影响以及对社会福利的影响。