AMERICAN POLITICS & PUBLIC POLICY WORKSHOP
Abstract: Do political institutions shape the possibility of sustaining cooperation when individuals must make both rival and cooperative decisions? It could be that simply having lost in a rival task undermines cooperation, reducing aggregate welfare. Alternatively, it might be that only when interacting with the same individual does this spillover occur, in which case institutions may prevent spillover. To test these arguments, we designed a two-stage incentivized experiment in which participants interact in the allocation of a rival private good and a Pareto-improving public good. We conducted two experiments in which we randomly assign individuals to either interact with the same individual for both tasks or a different individual for each task. Holding constant both past history and past behavior, the results of these experiments provide support for a Personal Partner History effect in which the mechanism that produces spillover is interacting with the same individual in both decisions.
Scott Bokemper (Ph.D., Stony Brook University, 2017) is a Postdoctoral Associate at the Institution for Social and Policy Studies and the Center for the Study of American Politics at Yale University. He uses experimental methods to address questions related to poverty, inequality, social policy, and cooperation. He is also interested in designing and programming novel economic games.
Open to the Yale community only.