Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Public Good Provision with Inter-Group Competition: The Effect of Group Size Asymmetry and Communication

智力上的功绩。带有集团间竞争的公共物品供给在政治经济学和组织经济学中有着重要的应用。例子包括竞选活动、寻租竞争和专利竞赛。这个项目使用实验方法来研究两个不同大小的群体之间对金钱奖励的竞争。该奖项由获奖小组的成员分享，无论他们个人对小组成功的贡献如何，因此该奖项构成了一种公共利益。经济环境包含两个层面的冲突：在群体内部，个人有动机搭乘其他成员昂贵贡献的便车；在群体之间，群体有动机竞争奖金。这项研究首先研究了一个简单的环境，在这个环境中，小组成员在贡献和不贡献之间做出二元决定。该项目后来扩展到更一般和更现实的环境中，由小组成员决定贡献多少，而不是简单地决定是否贡献。在这两种情况下，实验设计都检查了玩前组内沟通是否有助于解决组内搭便车问题。当不允许组内交流时，在纳什均衡中，尽管小群体规模较小，但仍有合理的机会赢得奖项。然而，一旦群体成员能够交流，在平衡中，小群体很少做出贡献，大群体通常能够获胜。这是因为当允许交流时，群体可以更好地协调，他们更有可能实现最优的集体结果，避免搭便车行为。内容分析被用来系统地量化传播如何影响游戏的发挥，这提供了重要的方法论贡献。更广泛的影响。这项研究对实际的政策结论和处方具有重要的意义。例如，它可以为与不对称群体的寻租竞争的潜在成本提供行为基准，这可以为竞选活动改革提供指导。它还将表明允许成立研究合资企业对创新活动的潜在收益或成本。这项研究还预计将对代表不足的群体的教、学和参与产生广泛的影响。该项目将雇用400多名本科生，这些学生来自普渡大学庞大而多样化的学生群体，并将为这些学生提供接触现代研究方法的重要机会。这些课程中的许多来自经济学和管理学课程，将是非理科专业的。

Intellectual Merit. Public good provision with inter-group competition has important applications in political economics and organizational economics. Examples include election campaigns, rent-seeking contests and patent races. This project uses experimental methods to study competition between two unequal size groups for a monetary prize. The prize is shared by the members of the winning group, regardless of their individual contributions to the groups' success, so the prize constitutes a public good. The economic environment incorporates two levels of conflict: within-group, individuals have an incentive to free ride on other members' costly contributions; and between-group, groups have an incentive to compete for the prize. The research first studies a simple environment in which group members make a binary decision between contributing and not contributing. The project is later extended to a more general and realistic setting in which group members decide how much to contribute rather than simply whether or not to contribute. In both cases, the experimental design examines whether pre-play within-group communication helps to solve the within-group free riding problem. When within-group communication is not allowed, in a Nash equilibrium the small group has reasonable chances to win the prize in spite of its size disadvantage. Once group members can communicate, however, in equilibrium the small group rarely contributes and the large group is usually able to win. This is because groups can better coordinate when communication is allowed, and they are more likely to achieve the optimal collective outcome and avoid free-riding behavior. Content analysis is used to systematically quantify how communication affects the play of the game, which provides an important methodological contribution. Broader Impacts. The research has important implications for practical policy conclusions and prescriptions. For example, it can provide behavioral benchmarks for the potential costs of rent-seeking contests with asymmetric groups, which can provide guidance for election campaign reform. It will also indicate potential gains or costs to innovative activity from allowing research joint ventures. The study is also projected to have a broad impact for teaching, learning, and participation by underrepresented groups. The project will employ over 400 undergraduate student subjects drawn from a large and diversified student population at Purdue University and will provide these students with important exposure to modern research methods. Many of these subjects, drawn from economics and management classes, will be non-science majors.