Exploring the Effects of Real Effort in a Weak-Link Experiment

47 Pages Posted: 9 Mar 2009

See all articles by Stefania Bortolotti

Stefania Bortolotti

MPI for Research on Collective Goods

Giovanna Devetag

Luiss Guido Carli; Luiss Guido Carli University

Andreas Ortmann

UNSW Australia Business School, School of Economics

Date Written: March 8, 2009

Abstract

We report results from a weak-link - often also called minimum-effort - game experiment with multiple Pareto-ranked strict pure-strategy Nash equilibria, using a real-effort rather than a chosen-effort task: subjects have to sort and count coins and their payoff depends on the worst performance in the group. While in the initial rounds our subjects typically coordinate on inefficient outcomes, almost 80 percent of the groups are able to overcome coordination failure in the later rounds. Our results are in stark contrast to results typically reported in the literature.

Keywords: real effort, weak-link game, coordination, laboratory experiments

JEL Classification: C72, C92

Suggested Citation

Bortolotti, Stefania and Devetag, Giovanna and Ortmann, Andreas, Exploring the Effects of Real Effort in a Weak-Link Experiment (March 8, 2009). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1355444 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1355444

Stefania Bortolotti (Contact Author)

MPI for Research on Collective Goods ( email )

Kurt-Schumacher-Str. 10
D-53113 Bonn, 53113
Germany

Giovanna Devetag

Luiss Guido Carli ( email )

Via Salvini 2
Roma, 00197
Italy

Luiss Guido Carli University ( email )

Via Salvini 2
Roma, 00197
Italy

Andreas Ortmann

UNSW Australia Business School, School of Economics ( email )

High Street
Sydney, NSW 2052
Australia

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