Talk:Public goods game

I have found one article that refers to this class of game in the singular: "public good games". Perhaps this singular form, and the abbreviation PGG, should redirect to this entry. I'm not sure how to set up such an alias, or I'd do it myself. --pohl (talk) 14:58, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Restrictions?

If it is mentioned "Researchers running the game multiply the number of tokens in the pot before it is distributed to encourage contribution", then I believe there is a restriction such that the multiplier has to be less than the number of players in order for the Nash equilibrium to hold (otherwise contributing 1 dollar gets you more than 1 dollar back even after the split, so then the Nash equilibrium would be everyone contributing all the money) —Preceding unsigned comment added by K61824 (talk • contribs) 20:55, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

http://thepublicshare.com/

Would this be a good website to include? The statistics page might be interesting. Alemaaltevinden (talk) 16:09, 19 June 2013 (UTC)

Dr. Bayer's comment on this article

Dr. Bayer has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

The writing could be improved. I also find the selection of results a bit arbitrary. In general writing a wiki entry on public goods games is a daunting task as there is so much work out there. Putting out paper (Bayer, R. C., Renner, E., & Sausgruber, R. (2010). Confusion and Learning in the Public Goods Game (No. 2010-24). University of Adelaide, School of Economics, now publishes in Experimental Economics 16, pp 478–496) in a further reading seems a bit weird. I would think that overview articles would make much more sense there.

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Dr. Bayer has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:

• Reference : Ralph-C Bayer & Elke Renner & Rupert Sausgruber, 2010. "Confusion and Learning in the Public Goods Game," School of Economics Working Papers 2010-24, University of Adelaide, School of Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 02:39, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Kamei's comment on this article

Dr. Kamei has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

The description of public goods game in Wikipedia covers a wide range of topics, each of which reads well. I think any lay-person can roughly understand the concepts as well as some results from research.

On the other hand, from an expert’s point of view (I am an expert in public good game studies), many descriptions are imprecise and superficial. For example, the Wikipedia says: ‘those who contribute below average or nothing are called “defector” or “free rider”, as opposed to the contributors or above average contributors who are called “cooperator”’ However, there is no common definition that everybody uses; instead, many people define cooperation behaviors differently (e.g., Fischbacher, Gächter and Fehr 2001, Kurzban and Houser 2005).

In the “Open public goods game” section, the Wikipedia explains: “If the amount contributed isn’t hidden, it tends to be significantly higher.” However, while some studies showed this possibility (e.g., Sell and Wilson 1991), there are other studies that showed that such visibility may “not” raise cooperation or may “even undermine” cooperation (e.g., Weimann 1994, Wilson and Sell 1997).

Also, in the “Public goods games with punishment and/or reward” section, the article explains: ‘many studies therefore emphasize the combination of (the thread of) punishment and rewards.’ However, this statement is a little confusing. I think many papers also focus on punishment alone (without rewards). Under some conditions, the effectiveness of punishment alone is very high (e.g., Nikiforakis and Norman 2007).

In the “Public goods games with punishment and/or reward” section, description on the impact of higher-order punishment is missing (e.g., Denant-Boemont et al. 2007, Nikiforakis 2008).

As for the other point that I mentioned above (some descriptions are superficial (and only relies on one or two papers)), one example would be the section of "Multiplication factor." Also, perhaps, this section can be divided into two sections: MPCR effect and group size effect.

Lastly I would like to add that much important literature is missing (e.g., Fehr and Gächter 2000 AER). There are several good survey articles in empirical evidence in public goods game. For example, see Ledyard 1995, Chaudhuri 2011.

References:

Fehr, Ernst, Fischbacher, Urs and Simon Gächter, 2001, Are People Conditionally Cooperative? Evidence from a Public Goods Experiment, Economics Letters.

Robert Kurzban and Daniel Houser, 2005. "Experiments investigating cooperative types in humans: A complement to evolutionary theory and simulations," PNAS

Rick K. Wilson and Jane Sell, 1997, “Liar, Liar... ” Cheap Talk and Reputation in Repeated Public Goods Settings, J Conflict Resolution.

Nikiforakis Nikos and Hans-Theo Normann, 2008, "A Comparative Statics Analysis of Punishment in Public Good Experiments," Experimental Economics.

Nikiforakis Nikos, 2008, "Punishment and Counter-Punishment in Public Good Games: Can We Really Govern Ourselves?" Journal of Public Economics.

Denant-Boemont Laurent, David Masclet, Charles Noussair, 2007, “Punishment, Counterpunishment and Sanction Enforcement in a Social Dilemma Experiment”, Symposium on Behavioral Game Theory," Economic Theory.

Jane Sell and Rick K. Wilson, 1991, "Levels of Information and Contributions to Public Goods," Social Forces.

Joachim Weimann, 1994, "Individual behaviour in a free riding experiment," Journal of Public Economics.

Chaudhuri, Ananish, 2011, “Sustaining Cooperation in Laboratory Public Goods Experiments: A Selective Survey of the Literature.” Experimental Economics.

Ledyard, John, 1995, “Public goods: A survey of experimental research.”

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Kamei has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:

• Reference : Kenju Kamei & Louis Putterman, 2013. "Play it Again: Partner Choice, Reputation Building and Learning in Restarting, Finitely-Repeated Dilemma Games," Working Papers 2013-8, Brown University, Department of Economics.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 18:26, 26 July 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Migheli's comment on this article

Dr. Migheli has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

I do not see any inaccuracy in this article.

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Migheli has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:

• Reference : Lotito, Gianna & Migheli, Matteo & Ortona, Guido, 2011. "Is cooperation instinctive? Evidence from the response times in a Public Goods Game," POLIS Working Papers 161, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:14, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Guillen's comment on this article

Dr. Guillen has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The public goods game is a standard of experimental economics. In the basic game, subjects secretly choose how many of their private tokens to put into a public pot. The tokens in this pot are multiplied by a factor (greater than one and less than the number of players, N) and this "public good" payoff is evenly divided among players. Each subject also keeps the tokens they do not contribute."

I believe there is a lot of room for improvement in the first paragraph. For instance:

"The public goods game (Andreoni, is often used by experimental economists in order to model a social dilemma. Experimental subjects are matched in groups and then asked to allocate a number of tokens into two accounts. Each token allocated to the public, or group, pays to all the group members. Each token allocated to the private account pays only to the subject who allocated the token. The best result for the groups happens when all the tokens are allocated to the group account, but each group member will benefit in payoff terms when allocating more tokens to his/her private account. That is, subjects have an incentive to free-ride on the contribution of other's. In that sense the public goods game is similar to the prisoner's dilemma game."

I would not call the first section "Results", better call it introduction. I would refer to the history of the game, mention the seminal papers by Isaac, Walker and Thomas (1984) and Andreoni (1988). Also, the standard Nash equilibrium of the game in pure strategies is as good as the assumptions of self-regading preferences over monetary outcomes and common knowledge of perfect rationality. Relaxing those assumptions results in multiple equilibria.

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

We believe Dr. Guillen has expertise on the topic of this article, since he has published relevant scholarly research:

• Reference : Pablo Guillen & Danielle Merrett, 2010. "Efficient inter-group competition and the provision of public goods," ThE Papers 10/03, Department of Economic Theory and Economic History of the University of Granada..

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 16:17, 24 August 2016 (UTC)

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