[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/gbl/wpaper/2014-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Fear of being left alone drives inefficient exit from partnerships. An experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Gaudeul, A.
  • Crosetto, P.
  • Riener, G.
Abstract
We explore in an experiment what leads to the breakdown of partnerships. Subjects are assigned a partner and participate in a repeated public good game with stochastic outcomes. They can choose each period between staying in the public project or working on their own. There is excessive exit as subjects overestimate the likelihood their partner will leave. High barriers to exit thus improve welfare. We observe that exit is driven by failure within the common project but also by pay-off comparisons across options and beliefs about being exploited. Those considerations increasingly matter as we lower exit costs across treatments.

Suggested Citation

  • Gaudeul, A. & Crosetto, P. & Riener, G., 2014. "Fear of being left alone drives inefficient exit from partnerships. An experiment," Working Papers 2014-02, Grenoble Applied Economics Laboratory (GAEL).
    • Handle: RePEc:gbl:wpaper:2014-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://gael.univ-grenoble-alpes.fr/sites/default/files/Mediatheque/doc-recherche/WP/A2014/gael2014-02.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Josh Lerner, 2005. "The Scope of Open Source Licensing," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 20-56, April.
    2. Alchian, Armen A & Demsetz, Harold, 1972. "Production , Information Costs, and Economic Organization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(5), pages 777-795, December.
    3. Gachter, Simon & Herrmann, Benedikt & Thoni, Christian, 2004. "Trust, voluntary cooperation, and socio-economic background: survey and experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(4), pages 505-531, December.
    4. Attila Ambrus & Ben Greiner, 2012. "Imperfect Public Monitoring with Costly Punishment: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3317-3332, December.
    5. Andreoni, James, 1988. "Why free ride? : Strategies and learning in public goods experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 291-304, December.
    6. Simon Gachter & Ernst Fehr, 2000. "Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 980-994, September.
    7. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    8. Comino, Stefano & Manenti, Fabio M. & Parisi, Maria Laura, 2007. "From planning to mature: On the success of open source projects," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 1575-1586, December.
    9. Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard, 2010. "Exit, collective action and polycentric political systems," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 143(3), pages 339-352, June.
    10. Boun My, Kene & Chalvignac, Benoît, 2010. "Voluntary participation and cooperation in a collective-good game," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 705-718, August.
    11. Peter Kuhn & Marie Claire Villeval, 2015. "Are Women More Attracted to Co‐operation Than Men?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 125(582), pages 115-140, February.
    12. Robert H. Frank & Thomas Gilovich & Dennis T. Regan, 1993. "Does Studying Economics Inhibit Cooperation?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 159-171, Spring.
    13. Michihiro Kandori & Ichiro Obara, 2006. "Efficiency in Repeated Games Revisited: The Role of Private Strategies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 499-519, March.
    14. McCloskey, Donald N., 1972. "The Enclosure of Open Fields: Preface to a Study of Its Impact on the Efficiency of English Agriculture in the Eighteenth Century," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(1), pages 15-35, March.
    15. Turner, Michael, 1986. "English Open Fields and Enclosures: Retardation or Productivity Improvements," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(3), pages 669-692, September.
    16. Claudia Keser & Frans Van Winden, 2000. "Conditional Cooperation and Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(1), pages 23-39, March.
    17. Drew Fudenberg & David Levine & Eric Maskin, 2008. "The Folk Theorem With Imperfect Public Information," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Drew Fudenberg & David K Levine (ed.), A Long-Run Collaboration On Long-Run Games, chapter 12, pages 231-273, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    18. James W. Friedman, 1971. "A Non-cooperative Equilibrium for Supergames," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(1), pages 1-12.
    19. Green, Edward J & Porter, Robert H, 1984. "Noncooperative Collusion under Imperfect Price Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 87-100, January.
    20. Weihua Guan, 2003. "From the help desk: Bootstrapped standard errors," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 3(1), pages 71-80, March.
    21. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    22. Frank Heinemann & Rosemarie Nagel & Peter Ockenfels, 2009. "Measuring Strategic Uncertainty in Coordination Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 76(1), pages 181-221.
    23. Fudenberg, Drew & Pathak, Parag A., 2010. "Unobserved punishment supports cooperation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(1-2), pages 78-86, February.
    24. Bengt Holmstrom, 1982. "Moral Hazard in Teams," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(2), pages 324-340, Autumn.
    25. John A. List, 2004. "Young, Selfish and Male: Field evidence of social preferences," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 114(492), pages 121-149, January.
    26. Ramzi Suleiman & David V. Budescu & Amnon Rapoport, 2001. "Provision of Step-Level Public Goods with Uncertain Provision Threshold and Continuous Contribution," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 10(3), pages 253-274, May.
    27. Putterman, Louis & Skillman, Gilbert L., 1992. "The role of exit costs in the theory of cooperative teams," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 596-618, December.
    28. Taylor, Mark P, 1996. "Earnings, Independence or Unemployment: Why Become Self-Employed?," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 58(2), pages 253-266, May.
    29. Xiao-Yuan Dong, 1998. "Trigger Strategies in Chinese Agricultural Teams," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 31(2), pages 465-490, May.
    30. Erte Xiao & Howard Kunreuther, 2016. "Punishment and Cooperation in Stochastic Social Dilemmas," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 60(4), pages 670-693, June.
    31. Fischbacher, Urs & Gachter, Simon & Fehr, Ernst, 2001. "Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 397-404, June.
    32. Katherine J. Stewart & Anthony P. Ammeter & Likoebe M. Maruping, 2006. "Impacts of License Choice and Organizational Sponsorship on User Interest and Development Activity in Open Source Software Projects," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 17(2), pages 126-144, June.
    33. Fehr, Ernst & Fischbacher, Urs & Kosfeld, Michael, 2005. "Neuroeconomic Foundation of Trust and Social Preferences," CEPR Discussion Papers 5127, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    34. Dickinson, David L., 1998. "The voluntary contributions mechanism with uncertain group payoffs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 517-533, May.
    35. Mailath George J. & Matthews Steven A. & Sekiguchi Tadashi, 2002. "Private Strategies in Finitely Repeated Games with Imperfect Public Monitoring," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, June.
    36. M. Vittoria Levati & Andrea Morone, 2013. "Voluntary Contributions with Risky and Uncertain Marginal Returns: The Importance of the Parameter Values," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 15(5), pages 736-744, October.
    37. Yoella Bereby-Meyer & Alvin E. Roth, 2006. "The Speed of Learning in Noisy Games: Partial Reinforcement and the Sustainability of Cooperation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(4), pages 1029-1042, September.
    38. Palfrey, Thomas R & Prisbrey, Jeffrey E, 1997. "Anomalous Behavior in Public Goods Experiments: How Much and Why?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 87(5), pages 829-846, December.
    39. Claudia Keser & Claude Montmarquette, 2011. "Voluntary versus Enforced Team Effort," Games, MDPI, vol. 2(3), pages 1-25, August.
    40. repec:cup:judgdm:v:6:y:2011:i:8:p:771-781 is not listed on IDEAS
    41. Chaim Fershtman & Neil Gandal, 2007. "Open source software: Motivation and restrictive licensing," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 4(2), pages 209-225, August.
    42. Jorge Colazo & Yulin Fang, 2009. "Impact of license choice on Open Source Software development activity," Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Association for Information Science & Technology, vol. 60(5), pages 997-1011, May.
    43. Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 1995. "Selection corrections for panel data models under conditional mean independence assumptions," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 115-132, July.
    44. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    45. Greiner, Ben, 2004. "An Online Recruitment System for Economic Experiments," MPRA Paper 13513, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    46. R. Cookson, 2000. "Framing Effects in Public Goods Experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 3(1), pages 55-79, June.
    47. Kandori, Michihiro, 2002. "Introduction to Repeated Games with Private Monitoring," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 1-15, January.
    48. Giangiacomo Bravo & Flaminio Squazzoni, 2013. "Exit, Punishment and Rewards in Commons Dilemmas: An Experimental Study," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(8), pages 1-9, August.
    49. Lin, Justin Yifu, 1990. "Collectivization and China's Agricultural Crisis in 1959-1961," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 98(6), pages 1228-1252, December.
    50. Aoyagi, Masaki & Fréchette, Guillaume, 2009. "Collusion as public monitoring becomes noisy: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1135-1165, May.
    51. Dong Xiao-yuan & Dow Gregory K., 1993. "Does Free Exit Reduce Shirking in Production Teams?," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 472-484, June.
    52. MacLeod W. Bentley, 1993. "The Role of Exit Costs in the Theory of Cooperative Teams: A Theoretical Perspective," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2), pages 521-529, June.
    53. Semykina, Anastasia & Wooldridge, Jeffrey M., 2010. "Estimating panel data models in the presence of endogeneity and selection," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 157(2), pages 375-380, August.
    54. Houser, Daniel & Xiao, Erte & McCabe, Kevin & Smith, Vernon, 2008. "When punishment fails: Research on sanctions, intentions and non-cooperation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 509-532, March.
    55. Cason, Timothy N. & Khan, Feisal U., 1999. "A laboratory study of voluntary public goods provision with imperfect monitoring and communication," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 533-552, April.
    56. Ernst Fehr & Urs Fischbacher & Michael Kosfeld, 2005. "Neuroeconomic Foundations of Trust and Social Preferences: Initial Evidence," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 346-351, May.
    57. Wilson, Alistair J. & Wu, Hong, 2017. "At-will relationships: How an option to walk away affects cooperation and efficiency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 487-507.
    58. Iris Bohnet & Fiona Greig & Benedikt Herrmann & Richard Zeckhauser, 2008. "Betrayal Aversion: Evidence from Brazil, China, Oman, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 294-310, March.
    59. Holcomb, James H. & Nelson, Paul S., 1997. "The role of monitoring in duopoly market outcomes," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 79-93.
    60. Roy Radner & Roger Myerson & Eric Maskin, 1986. "An Example of a Repeated Partnership Game with Discounting and with Uniformly Inefficient Equilibria," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 59-69.
    61. Orbell, John M. & Schwartz-Shea, Peregrine & Simmons, Randy T., 1984. "Do Cooperators Exit More Readily than Defectors?," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 78(1), pages 147-162, March.
    62. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dorothée Honhon & Kyle Hyndman, 2020. "Flexibility and Reputation in Repeated Prisoner’s Dilemma Games," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 4998-5014, November.
    2. Serdarevic, Nina & Strømland, Eirik & Tjøtta, Sigve, 2021. "It pays to be nice: The benefits of cooperating in markets," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 90(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Gaudeul, Alexia & Crosetto, Paolo & Riener, Gerhard, 2017. "Better stuck together or free to go? Of the stability of cooperation when individuals have outside options," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 99-112.
    2. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    3. Guillen, Pablo & Fatas, Enrique & Brañas-Garza, Pablo, 2010. "Inducing efficient conditional cooperation patterns in public goods games, an experimental investigation," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 872-883, December.
    4. Simon Gaechter & Benedikt Herrmann, 2008. "Reciprocity, culture, and human cooperation: Previous insights and a new cross-cultural experiment," Discussion Papers 2008-14, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    5. Goeschl, Timo & Jarke, Johannes, 2014. "Trust, but verify? When trustworthiness is observable only through (costly) monitoring," WiSo-HH Working Paper Series 20, University of Hamburg, Faculty of Business, Economics and Social Sciences, WISO Research Laboratory.
    6. Heinrich H. Nax & Stefano Balietti & Ryan O. Murphy & Dirk Helbing, 2018. "Adding noise to the institution: an experimental welfare investigation of the contribution-based grouping mechanism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 50(2), pages 213-245, February.
    7. Ernesto Reuben & Sigrid Suetens, 2012. "Revisiting strategic versus non-strategic cooperation," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 15(1), pages 24-43, March.
    8. repec:tiu:tiucen:200922 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. repec:dgr:kubcen:200922 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Roi Zultan & Eva-Maria Steiger, 2011. "See No Evil: Information Chains and Reciprocity in Teams," Working Papers 1108, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    11. repec:dgr:kubcen:200833 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Felix Albrecht & Sebastian Kube & Christian Traxler, 2016. "Cooperation and Punishment: The Individual-Level Perspective," CESifo Working Paper Series 6284, CESifo.
    13. repec:tiu:tiucen:200833 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. P. Battiston & L. Chollete & S. Harrison, 2022. "May The Forcing Be With You: Experimental Evidence on Mandatory Contributions to Public Goods," Economics Department Working Papers 2022-EP01, Department of Economics, Parma University (Italy).
    15. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gaechter, 2008. "Heterogeneous Social Preferences And The Dynamics Of Free Riding In Public Good Experiments," Discussion Papers 2008-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    16. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    17. Khadjavi, Menusch & Lange, Andreas & Nicklisch, Andreas, 2014. "The Social Value of Transparency and Accountability: Experimental Evidence from Asymmetric Public Good Games," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100512, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    18. Dickinson, David L. & Masclet, David & Villeval, Marie Claire, 2015. "Norm enforcement in social dilemmas: An experiment with police commissioners," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 74-85.
    19. Martin G. Kocher & Peter Martinsson & Kristian Ove R. Myrseth & Conny E. Wollbrant, 2017. "Strong, bold, and kind: self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 44-69, March.
    20. Bernd Irlenbusch & Janna Ter Meer, 2015. "Lying in public good games with and without punishment," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 06-02, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    21. Hongyu Guan & Xianchen Zhu & Ping Zhang, 2016. "Rule-Inequality-Aversion Preference and Conditional Cooperation in Public Goods Experiments: Economic Experiment Evidence from China," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 799-825, July.
    22. Balafoutas, Loukas & Kocher, Martin G. & Putterman, Louis & Sutter, Matthias, 2013. "Equality, equity and incentives: An experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 32-51.
    23. Daniele Nosenzo & Fabio Tufano, 2015. "Entry or Exit? The Effect of Voluntary Participation on Cooperation," Discussion Papers 2015-20, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    24. Gallo, Edoardo & Riyanto, Yohanes E. & Roy, Nilanjan & Teh, Tat-How, 2019. "Cooperation in an Uncertain and Dynamic World," MPRA Paper 97878, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    BREAKUP; COLLABORATION; COOPERATION; EXIT; IMPERFECT PUBLIC MONITORING; MORAL HAZARD; PARTNERSHIP; PUNISHMENT; PUBLIC GOOD; REPEATED GAME; SOCIAL RISK; TEAM;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C23 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Models with Panel Data; Spatio-temporal Models
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gbl:wpaper:2014-02. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Adrien Hervouet (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inragfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.