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Behavioural and Experimental Economics pp 221–233Cite as

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public goods experiments

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Abstract

Since the vivid description of the Prisoner’s Dilemma game and the accompanying tension between self-interest and efficiency, economists, political scientists, psychologists, sociologists and others have wondered about how individuals resolve these conflicting motivations. Many have investigated this question by experimentally examining behaviour when individual interest and group interest conflict. This research goes under different names — for example, social dilemmas in psychology, commons dilemmas in political science and public goods problems in economics.

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Authors
  1. Rachel T. A. Croson
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

    Steven N. Durlauf

  2. Cornell University, USA

    Lawrence E. Blume

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© 2010 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

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Croson, R.T.A. (2010). public goods experiments. In: Durlauf, S.N., Blume, L.E. (eds) Behavioural and Experimental Economics. The New Palgrave Economics Collection. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230280786_28

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