Article
Economics
Ann-Kathrin Koessler, Julia Mueller, Sonja Zitzelsberger
Summary: Research shows that allowing unconditional transfers enhances public good provision and cooperation in situations involving heterogeneous actors, particularly when resources are transferred from players with high endowment but low productivity to players with high productivity but low endowment, achieving the highest maximum group payoff.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
(2023)
Article
Economics
Lawrence R. De Geest, David C. Kingsley
Summary: The study shows that in a public goods game with private information about endowments, groups tend to adopt a norm of contributing based on the lowest endowment when they cannot observe others' endowments, balancing the benefits of cooperation with the risks of punishment. Enforcement strategies prevent cooperation from unraveling when high types mix with low types, but also allow high types to hide behind the lower endowment. Norms can attenuate but not eliminate non-cooperative behavior in settings with incomplete information.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
(2021)
Article
Development Studies
Vesall Nourani, Annemie Maertens, Hope Michelson
Summary: The success of agricultural projects in low income countries depends crucially on the ability of farmer groups to cooperate. Results from experiments in Malawian farmer groups show that democratically run groups with close social ties are more cooperative. Institutional rules are shown to be sticky, impacting decision-making processes in pre-existing groups. This highlights the importance of considering group formation and functioning in the design phase of agricultural projects in low income countries.
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Jianwei Wang, Wenshu Xu, Xingjian Zhang, Nianxuan Zhao, Fengyuan Yu
Summary: Public resource redistribution is an important means of regulating social income equality. However, previous studies have not comprehensively defined low-income groups, and have overlooked the inequality caused by initial endowment differences. Additionally, it is important to consider whether redistribution benefits the whole and how to reduce inequality while promoting altruistic behavior.
PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
(2023)
Article
Mathematics, Applied
Hsuan-Wei Lee, Colin Cleveland, Attila Szolnoki
Summary: Punishing those who refuse to participate in common efforts is a known way to maintain cooperation, but it can make punishers vulnerable and jeopardize effectiveness. Hiring special players to monitor and punish defectors as an alternative using a tax-based fund is suggested. The level of tax and punishment fines are crucial factors in determining coexistence with cooperators or defectors and achieving optimal outcomes.
APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTATION
(2022)
Article
Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications
Attila Szolnoki, Xiaojie Chen
Summary: In a public goods game, reinvesting the results of common effort and adding it to the pool for the next round can change players' strategies, especially in structured populations where the last round is crucial for achieving full cooperation. In such cases, it may be advantageous for defectors to support the first round and enjoy the extra benefit of accumulated contributions.
CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS
(2022)
Article
Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications
Hsuan-Wei Lee, Colin Cleveland, Attila Szolnoki
Summary: When people collaborate, they expect more than a simple sum of their efforts. In the public goods game, participants' contributions are multiplied by an r synergy factor before being distributed. This study explores the consequences of different group sizes and synergy factors. Results show that larger groups with higher synergy factors result in higher levels of cooperation, benefiting the entire community. Similar behavior is observed in other heterogeneous topologies.
CHAOS SOLITONS & FRACTALS
(2023)
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Lihui Shang, Sihao Sun, Jun Ai, Zhan Su
Summary: This study investigates the evolution of cooperative behaviors in the spatial public goods game. The findings indicate that interaction diversity greatly enhances the level of cooperation compared to the traditional model with homogeneous social scope. The mechanism behind this improvement is based on the inhomogeneous interactive domain, where cooperators can easily maintain their strategies and stabilize the cooperative neighborhood, leading to the emergence of close cooperation clusters. Furthermore, increasing uncertainty in the strategy adoption process can help the system achieve full cooperation when the diversity mechanism is considered.
PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
(2022)
Article
Economics
Abhijit Ramalingam, Brock Stoddard
Summary: Inequality reduces community cooperation. Policy proposals of pure redistribution to eliminate inequality do not increase cooperation, as the rich still keep most of their resources for private consumption.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
(2024)
Article
Biology
Xiaomin Wang, Marta C. Couto, Nianyi Wang, Xinmiao An, Bin Chen, Yali Dong, Christian Hilbe, Boyu Zhang
Summary: One important use of evolutionary game theory is to study social dilemmas and understand why people cooperate. This study investigates the effect of asymmetry in coordination games and finds that humans prefer to contribute the same proportion of their endowment. Experimental results show the non-trivial effects of inequality on cooperation, and discuss the extent to which evolutionary game theory models can account for these effects.
PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Hoon C. Shin, Sechindra Vallury, Marco A. Janssen, David J. Yu
Summary: This study investigates the combined effects of voluntary participation and group-level competition and selection on the evolution of altruistic punishment. The results show that voluntary participation has negative effects on cooperation in small groups, while in large groups, it has positive effects within a limited range of nonparticipants' payoff.
Article
Psychology, Biological
Unai Alvarez-Rodriguez, Federico Battiston, Guilherme Ferraz de Arruda, Yamir Moreno, Matjaz Perc, Vito Latora
Summary: This study examines the evolutionary dynamics of a public goods game in social systems with higher-order interactions, providing a theoretical framework for studying cooperation in networked groups. The research also demonstrates how the presence of hubs and interactions in groups of different sizes influence the evolution of cooperation, and applies this framework to real-world collaboration data in science and technology to extract the synergy factor's dependence on group size. The work offers a way to boost cooperation in social groups through informed actions.
NATURE HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Experimental
Shanyu Kates, David DeSteno
Summary: Gratitude helps alleviate over-extraction in resource dilemmas and promotes sustainable behavior.
Article
Mathematics, Applied
Boyu Zhang, Xinmiao An, Yali Dong
Summary: Conditional cooperators play a significant role in public goods games, as they do not increase contribution levels but enhance the effectiveness of institutional punishment. This leads to a higher contribution rate in punishment scenarios compared to reward scenarios, demonstrating the robustness of this result in various decision-making settings.
APPLIED MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTATION
(2021)
Article
Physics, Multidisciplinary
Xiaowen Zhong, Ying Fan, Zengru Di
Summary: Evolutionary game theory studies the interactions between individuals, and the combination of complex network and evolutionary game theory has attracted considerable attention. Research on public goods game on different types of signed networks shows that friendly and hostile relationships have varied effects on cooperation among individuals.
PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Pablo Branas-Garza, Diego Jorrat, Jaromir Kovarik, Maria C. Lopez
Summary: This study explores the impact of stakes on charitable giving in lottery prizes, finding that while donations increase in absolute terms with higher stakes, the donated fraction decreases. People are still willing to share a portion of higher amounts, but the behavior of donating the entire prize disappears with increasing stakes. The findings suggest that sharing with others is a common human trait, but stakes play a crucial role in determining generosity.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
P. Branas-Garza, D. Jorrat, A. Alfonso, A. M. Espin, T. Garcia Munoz, J. Kovarik
Summary: Generosity decreased during the initial explosive growth of the COVID-19 pandemic in Andalusia, particularly among older individuals. The findings suggest that social behavior quickly adapts to the pandemic environment, possibly reflecting selective prosociality.
ROYAL SOCIETY OPEN SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Economics
Antonio Alfonso-Costillo, Pablo Branas-Garza, Ma Carmen Lopez-Martin
Summary: Using an online experiment, this paper demonstrates that even a minimal variation can increase participants' honesty. The observed effect is stronger for women and older participants, indicating that these groups are more sensitive to the changes in incentives.
Article
Economics
Pablo Branas-Garza, Riccardo Ciacci, Ericka G. Rascon Ramirez
Summary: This study investigates the sensitivity of subjective expectation data elicitation on educational outcomes to anchors. The findings suggest that mothers exposed to anchored treatments report more pessimistic parental expectations, and low educated mothers allocated to anchored treatments are more likely to report lower levels of education. Anchored expectations also have higher predictive power for educational outcomes.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Economics
Pablo Branas-Garza, Maria Paz Espinosa, Ayca E. Giritligil
Summary: This study examines the intergenerational transmission of democratic values and their influence on preferences over social choice rules. The experiment reveals significant differences between the choices of parents (Majoritarian Compromise and Plurality) and students (Social Compromise) regarding social choice rules, providing support for the hypothesis of parental transmission of preferences.
JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR & ORGANIZATION
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Noelia Rivera-Garrido, M. P. Ramos-Sosa, Michela Accerenzi, Pablo Branas-Garza
Summary: This paper compares binary and continuous set of responses in survey questionnaires, and finds that respondents are more likely to answer "Yes" in the binary setting and spend less time. The results also suggest that the type of question matters.
SCIENTIFIC REPORTS
(2022)
Article
Economics
Pablo Branas-Garza, Diego Jorrat, Antonio M. Espin, Angel Sanchez
Summary: The use of real decision-making incentives in economic experiments remains controversial. This study analyzes data from lab experiments in Spain and field and online experiments in Nigeria and the UK, finding that the use of hypothetical or real payments has minimal impact on the elicitation of short-term and long-term discounting.
EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS
(2023)
Article
Economics
Pablo Branas-Garza, Antonio Cabrales, Guillermo Mateu, Angel Sanchez, Angela Sutan
Summary: This study experimentally examines the impact of pre-play social interactions on negotiations, including conversations, food, and beverages. The results show that none of these interaction components significantly improve negotiation outcomes compared to no interaction. The study also finds no superiority of interaction in terms of trust and reciprocity.
JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Miguel Ruiz-Garcia, Juan Ozaita, Maria Pereda, Antonio Alfonso, Pablo Branas-Garza, Jose A. Cuesta, Angel Sanchez
Summary: Networks of social interactions are crucial for civilizations, but the quantitative understanding of them is still limited. This study examines real social networks in 13 schools, involving over 3,000 students and 60,000 relationships. The triadic influence metric is introduced to measure the impact of nearest neighbors, which outperforms personal traits in predicting relationship signs.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Public, Environmental & Occupational Health
Michela Accerenzi, Pablo Branas-Garza, Diego Jorrat
Summary: This study aimed to investigate parents' knowledge and predictions about the age of menarche. The findings showed that girls primarily obtain information about menarche from their mothers or other female family members. Interestingly, individuals with formal education and women tend to give lower predictions.
ARCHIVES OF PUBLIC HEALTH
(2023)
Article
Anthropology
Antonio M. Espin, Pablo Branas-Garza, Juan F. Gamella, Benedikt Herrmann, Jesus Martin
Summary: The study finds that Gitano non-cooperators were not punished by co-ethnics in homogeneous groups but were harshly punished by other Gitanos and non-Gitanos in mixed groups. This suggests the existence of culture-specific motives for punishment.
EVOLUTIONARY HUMAN SCIENCES
(2022)
Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Pablo Branas-Garza, Lorenzo Estepa-Mohedano, Diego Jorrat, Victor Orozco, Ericka Rascon-Ramirez
Summary: The study found that using a simplified version of risk preference measurement can address the issues of cost, fairness, and safety in measuring risk preferences.
JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING
(2021)
Article
Economics
Luis Amador-Hidalgo, Pablo Branas-Garza, Antonio M. Espin, Teresa Garcia-Munoz, Ana Hernandez-Roman
Summary: The study examines the relationship between cognitive abilities and risk preferences, finding that cognitive abilities do not have a significant impact on risky decision making, but higher ability individuals may be influenced more by noise in decision making. The research suggests that previous studies may have mistakenly attributed the correlation between cognitive abilities and risk preferences to a failure to consider noisy decision-making factors.
EUROPEAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
(2021)
Article
Economics
Ennio Bilancini, Leonardo Boncinelli, Chiara Nardi, Veronica Pizziol
Summary: In this study, we investigated the impact of environmental risk and correlation of risk among group members on cooperation in a one-shot public goods game. We found that neither the presence nor the correlation of risk significantly affected individual contributions.
JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS
(2024)
Article
Economics
Gian Luigi Albano, Angela Cipollone, Roberto Di Paolo, Giovanni Ponti, Marco Sparro
Summary: In this experiment, we investigate the relative weight of quality and price in procurement contract auctions and find that different weights significantly alter the strategic environment and affect efficiency. Our findings demonstrate that a higher weight on quality performs better in terms of its own objective function compared to a lower weight on quality, despite inducing larger deviations from equilibrium.
JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS
(2024)
Article
Economics
Christian Koch, Cornelius Mueller
Summary: Many countries allow voluntary disclosures of tax evasion under certain conditions to exempt individuals from legal prosecution. Empirical research shows that tax amnesties are most successful when enforcement efforts increase, as they help tax evaders adapt to new circumstances. However, anticipated tax amnesties can potentially reduce tax compliance, acting as insurance against an increased risk of detection. Experimental results demonstrate that this insurance effect does decrease overall tax compliance by about 9-10 percent, highlighting its importance in tax policy design.
JOURNAL OF BEHAVIORAL AND EXPERIMENTAL ECONOMICS
(2024)
