Leading by example with and without exclusion power in voluntary contribution experiments

We examine the effects of leading by example in voluntary contribution experiments. Leadership is implemented by letting one group member contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadership increases contributions in comparison to the standard voluntary contribution mechanism, especially so when it goes along with authority in the form of granting the leader exclusion power. Whether leadership is fixed or rotating among group members has no significant influence on contributions. Only a minority of groups succeeds in endogenously installing a leader, even though groups with leaders are much more efficient than groups without a leader.     

Decompositions and potentials for normal form games

A basic model of commitment is to convert a two-player game in strategic form to a “leadership game” with the same payoffs, where one player, the leader, commits to a strategy, to which the second player always chooses a best reply. This paper studies such leadership games for games with convex strategy sets. We apply them to mixed extensions of finite games, which we analyze completely, including nongeneric games. The main result is that leadership is advantageous in the sense that, as a set, the leader's payoffs in equilibrium are at least as high as his Nash and correlated equilibrium payoffs in the simultaneous game. We also consider leadership games with three or more players, where most conclusions no longer hold.     

EMERGENCE OF LEADERSHIP IN TEAMS*

This paper provides a simple model to explain the emergence of leadership in an unstructured team. Each agent has partial information about the productivity of the team. Each agent may invest a productive effort in one of two periods. If one agent voluntarily moves first and the other waits for the second period, and if the first‐move action successfully transmits his type, the first mover effectively exercises leadership in affecting the effort choice of the second mover. We prove that, if each agent holds stochastically independent information, leadership emerges with positive probabilities in Cho–Kreps stable outcomes.     

THE UNPAID LEADERS OF FRENCH VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS

ABSTRACT ** :  This paper focuses on the voluntary workers who take on responsibilities in French voluntary associations. First, drawing on a national association survey, we contrast the characteristics of leadership volunteers, especially chairpersons, with those of the French population as a whole. We show that leaders are very different from the overall population even if these differences seem to diminish for organizations created more recently. Second, from a national household survey, we compare board members with other members of associations. Among other results, we find that the former are more rooted in their local environment and they participate more frequently in several associations. They are driven by more activist motives than are the other members. They give more time to their associations and they use more skills in their voluntary tasks than do the other volunteers.     

Voluntary contributions to a joint project with asymmetric agents

We revisit Admati and Perry (1991)'s model of voluntary contributions to a joint project. Their main result that equilibrium contributions are small appears not to be robust to the introduction of asymmetries.     

Dynamic group formation in the repeated prisoner?s dilemma

We consider dynamic group formation in repeated n-person prisoner?s dilemma. Agreements in coalitional bargaining are self-binding in that they are supported as subgame perfect equilibria of repeated games. Individuals are allowed to renegotiate the cooperating group agreement through a process of voluntary participation. We prove that a cooperating group forms as an absorbing state of a Markov perfect equilibrium after a finite number of renegotiations if and only if the group is Pareto efficient, provided that individuals are patient. The cooperating group can only expand.     

The limits of self-governance when cooperators get punished: Experimental evidence from urban and rural Russia

We report evidence from public goods experiments with and without punishment which we conducted in Russia with 566 urban and rural participants of young and mature age cohorts. Russia is interesting for studying voluntary cooperation because of its long history of collectivism, and a huge urban–rural gap. In contrast to previous experiments we find no cooperation-enhancing effect of punishment. An important reason is that there is punishment of contributors in all four subject pools. Thus, punishment can also undermine the scope for self-governance in the sense of high levels of voluntary cooperation that are sustained by sanctioning free riders only.     

Monotone equilibria in Bayesian games of strategic complementarities

For Bayesian games of strategic complementarities, we provide a constructive proof of the existence of a greatest and a least Bayesian Nash equilibrium, each one in strategies that are monotone in type. Our main assumptions, besides strategic complementarities, are that each player's payoff displays increasing differences in own action and the profile of types and that each player's interim beliefs are increasing in type with respect to first-order stochastic dominance (e.g., types are affiliated). The result holds for general action and type spaces (single-, multi-, or infinite-dimensional; continuous or discrete) and no prior is assumed. We also provide the following comparative statics result: the greatest and least equilibria are higher if there is a first-order stochastic dominant shift in the interim beliefs. We apply this result to strategic information revelation in games of voluntary disclosure.     

Who to punish? Individual decisions and majority rule in mitigating the free rider problem

We study a voluntary contributions mechanism in which punishment may be allowed, depending on subjects’ voted rules. We found that out of 160 group votes, even when groups had no prior experience with unrestricted punishment, no group ever voted to allow unrestricted punishment and no group ever allowed punishment of high contributors. Over a series of votes and periods of learning we found a distinct reluctance to allow any punishment at the beginning, with a gradual but clear evolution toward allowing punishment of low contributors. And groups allowing punishment of only low contributors achieved levels of cooperation and efficiency that are among the highest in the literature on social dilemmas.     

Solidarity among the poor

We conduct a field experiment with low-income subjects in Dallas, Texas. We examine voluntary, informal risk sharing using a visual representation of the solidarity game developed for low-literacy populations. We find substantially more ‘fixed gift to loser’ behavior and less ‘egotistical’ behavior than in previous studies. Individuals who display ‘egotistical’ behavior are more risk tolerant. The amount of the conditional gifts is positively related to age, income, and connection to the community. However, trust and empathy, which are commonly discussed as drivers for solidarity, are not significantly related to the amount given.     

企业异质性、自愿捐赠与商会的本质:一个假说

本文利用异质自愿捐赠模型扩展了商会本质的讨论。商会可以视为大企业内部治理与外部网络拓展相互替代的结果。异质性程度高的行业,商会较容易围绕"骨干"企业成长起来。企业规模越同质,自愿捐赠形成的商会规模趋于下降,随着企业数目增多偏离社会福利最优的程度也将越大。异质性条件下的商会网络的物理架构更偏向于星型网,进而,这将给商会的政治经济社会学意义评价带来困难。     

Not just babble: Opening the black box of communication in a voluntary contribution experiment

We let subjects in a voluntary contribution experiment make non-binding numerical announcements about their “possible” contributions and, in some treatments, send written promises to contribute specific amounts. We find that announcements were responded to both by others’ announcements and by real play, for example announcements led to costly punishment when found to be misleading. We also find that adding pre-play announcements to treatments with punishment can increase efficiency by letting cost-free warnings substitute for costly punishment. The threat of punishing false announcements and promises helps reduce false signals, but only when promise statements can be sent is the effect sufficient for achieving greater efficiency.     

Weak links, good shots and other public good games: Building on BBV

We suggest an alternative way of analyzing the canonical Bergstrom-Blume-Varian model of non-cooperative voluntary contributions to a public good that avoids the proliferation of dimensions as the number of players is increased. We exploit this approach to analyze models in which the aggregate level of public good is determined as a more general social composition function of individual gifts — specifically, as a CES form — rather than as an unweighted sum. We also analyze Hirshleifer's weakest-link and best-shot models. In each case, we characterize the set of equilibria, in some cases establishing existence of a unique equilibrium as well as briefly pointing out some interesting comparative static properties. We also study the weakest-link and best-shot limits of the CES composition function and show how the former can be used for equilibrium selection and the latter to establish that equilibria of some better-shot games are identical to those of the much simpler best-shot game.     

Leading-by-example and signaling in voluntary contribution games: an experimental study

We report experimental results on the effect of leadership in a voluntary contribution game. Consistent with recent theories we find that leading-by-example increases contributions and earnings in an environment where a leader has private information about the returns from contributing (Hermalin in Am Econ Rev 88:1188–1206, 1998; Vesterlund in J Public Econ 87:627–657, 2003). In contrast the ability to lead-by-example has no effect on total contributions and earnings when such returns are commonly known. In our environment the success of leadership therefore appears to be driven by signaling rather than by nonpecuniary factors such as reciprocity. This paper was started while the authors were visiting the Harvard Business School during the fall of 2000. We are grateful for their hospitality and financial support. Vesterlund acknowledges support from the National Science Foundation and Potters from the Royal Netherlands’ Academy of Arts and Sciences. We thank Henrik Orzen for assistance in conducting the experiment. We also thank David Cooper and an anonymous referee who helped us improve the paper. Finally we thank Chris Anderson, Jim Andreoni, John Duffy, Simon Gaechter, Ernan Haruvy, Muriel Niederle, Jack Ochs, Elke Renner, Al Roth, participants at ESA-meetings (Barcelona, 2001), the Leadership and Social Interactions Workshop (Lyon, 2003), SITE (Stanford, 2004) and seminar participants at Alabama, CMU, Duke, Keele, Maryland, Nottingham, NYU, Pittsburgh, OSU, and York for valuable comments.     

FARSIGHTED COALITIONAL STABILITY OF A PRICE LEADERSHIP CARTEL

This paper analyzes the farsighted behaviour of firms that form a dominant price leadership cartel. We consider stability concepts such as the farsighted core, the farsighted stable sets, and the largest consistent set. We show that: (i) the farsighted core is either an empty set or a singleton set of the grand cartel; (ii) any Pareto efficient cartel is itself a farsighted stable set; and (iii) the set of cartels in which fringe firms enjoy higher profits than the firms in the minimal Pareto efficient cartel is the largest consistent set.     

ON THE ROBUSTNESS OF PRIVATE LEADERSHIP IN MIXED DUOPOLY

We investigate a mixed duopoly where a state‐owned public enterprise competes against a profit‐maximising private enterprise. We analyse whether private leadership or public leadership is robust in the observable delay game. We find that private leadership is always risk dominant. We also investigate how ownership structure in a public firm affects the equilibrium distribution of roles. We find that the roles are as follows: (1) Cournot, when the degree of privatisation is low, (2) private leadership, when it is middle, (3) both private leadership and public leadership, when it is high. The result implies that private leadership is again more robust.     

What role should public enterprises play in free-entry markets?

We investigate a desirable role of public enterprise in mixed oligopoly in free-entry markets. We compare the following three cases: (a) a public firm produces before private firms (public leadership), (b) all firms produce simultaneously (Cournot), (c) a public firm produces after private firms (private leadership). We find that private leadership is best and public leadership is worst, in contrast to the cases without entries and exits of private firms. We also investigate the welfare implication of privatization. We find that some important results shown by existing works do not hold under private leadership.     

Taking the initiative. What characterizes leaders?

Taking the initiative is a crucial element of leadership and an important asset for many jobs. We assess this element of leadership in a game in which it emerges spontaneously since people have a non-obvious possibility to take the initiative. We can show that leadership in this game correlates with real life activities associated with taking the initiative. Combining this game with other experimental games and with questionnaires, we investigate the personality characteristics that entail leadership. We find efficiency concerns and generosity to be important determinants of leadership. Leaders have an internal locus of control and are more patient than non-leaders, but they are not different from the non-leaders with respect to risk attitude. Response time patterns and the results from the cognitive reflection test show that cognitive resources are relevant in the decision to lead.     

强制性会计变更与自发性会计变更之相关性研究

研究结果表明，我国强制性会计变更与自发性会计变更具有相关性。在强制性会计变更为调减利润的年度，我国自发性会计变更部分抵消了强制性会计变更的影响；具有特殊目的的上市公司会逆当年强制性会计变更方向而进行能实现其特定目的的自发性会计变更。     

团队领导风格与团队学习能力关系实证研究

从理论上分析两种团队领导风格（变革型领导风格和交易型领导风格）与团队学习能力9种分能力的具体关系,提出相应的5个理论假设,并通过问卷调查和统计分析,对理论假设进行了实证检验。研究表明,变革型领导风格和交易型领导风格均对团队学习能力有正向影响,但两种领导风格对9种学习分能力的影响各有侧重。同时,要构建卓越的团队学习能力,交易型领导风格不可或缺。