Leading-by-example and signaling in voluntary contribution games: an experimental study |
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Authors: | Jan Potters Martin Sefton Lise Vesterlund |
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Institution: | (1) Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands;(2) University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK;(3) University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15620, USA |
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Abstract: | 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. |
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Keywords: | Leading-by-example Voluntary provision Public goods Signaling Reciprocity |
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