Leadership and conditional cooperation in a sequential voluntary contribution mechanism : experimental evidence (original) (raw)

Abstract

We show experimentally that public goods are provided more e¢ ciently via the voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM) if players can divide their contributions into two stages. Our …ndings address the role of leadership in social dilemmas. Do leaders provide a "good example "? And how do they a¤ect the behavior of potential followers? We …nd that Stage 1 contributions in the sequential two-stage VCM show signi…cant leadership e¤ect. At the same time, the followers'Stage 2 contributions represent a negligible share of the e¢ ciency gain. We conclude that an e¢ cient sequencing of contributions in the VCM has to be targeted towards creating leadership incentives, and that leadership should be inclusive rather than exclusive. JEL Classi…cation: C72; C91

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References (35)

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