2008-08-06 04:09:35
by Simon Halliday in Amanuensis
Economics
Are economic experiments representative of underlying sentiments, or social preferences? This was the topic of a recent series of posts I did on articles by John List two of which were in collaboration with Steven Levitt (you can find them here, here and here). One of the main papers to which List referred was a paper by Nicholas Bardsley, then a working paper, and recently published in Experimental Economics. So that's what I'm reviewing today: Nicholas Bardsley's 'Dictator Game Giving: altruism or artefact'.
Bardsley's main thesis is that altruistic giving, and by extension m...more
- Bardsley N. (2008) Dictator game giving: altruism or artefact?. Experimental Economics, 11(2), 122-133. DOI: 10.1007/s10683-007-9172-2
2008-07-24 04:08:30
by Simon Halliday in Amanuensis
Economics
Diversity facilitates cooperation according to research published in the latest Nature. The paper fits well into the literature in evolutionary game theory on the prisoner's dilemma and public goods games. I'll give a very brief look at some of the points I found pertinent in the paper.
Santos, Santos and Pacheco's main assertion is that diversity promotes cooperation, specifically:
[C]ooperation is promoted by the diversity associated with the number and size of the public goods game in which each individual participates and with the individual contribution to each such game...more
- Pacheco J. M. (2008) Social diversity promotes the emergence of cooperation in public goods games. Nature, 454(7201), 213-216. DOI: 10.1038/nature06940