IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v231y2025ics0167268125000332.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The poor, the rich and the middle class: Experimental evidence from heterogeneous public good games

Author

Listed:
  • Derbyshire, Daniel W.
  • Drouvelis, Michalis
  • Grosskopf, Brit

Abstract

This study sheds light on how different sources of inequality can affect cooperation in public good games. We present the results of one-shot and repeated public good experiments that seek to understand the interaction between the endowment and marginal return in heterogeneous groups. Our focus is on situations where endowments and marginal returns are either inversely or proportionally related. While two normatively appealing contribution rules are aligned in the proportional treatment, a conflict arises in the inverse treatment. In the one-shot experiment, we do not find significant differences across treatments. Contributions increase when the endowment, the marginal return or both increase. This is observed in all treatments except when endowment and marginal return are inversely related. Then the ‘middle class’ participants (those with medium endowment and marginal return) contribute more than both the high and low endowment types, mirroring real world observations of a ‘squeezed middle’. This suggests a conflict between the highly endowed subjects (but with low marginal return) and those with a high marginal return (but with low endowment). This pattern is similar when eliciting beliefs about others’ contributions - the two conflicting types expect others to contribute more than they do themselves. The novel treatments are repeated for 15 periods in a subsequent experiment to investigate potential convergence and dynamics. The results are similar to those of the one-shot interaction.

Suggested Citation

  • Derbyshire, Daniel W. & Drouvelis, Michalis & Grosskopf, Brit, 2025. "The poor, the rich and the middle class: Experimental evidence from heterogeneous public good games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 231(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:231:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125000332
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106913
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125000332
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.106913?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public goods; Heterogeneity; Endowment; Marginal return; Contribution norms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D60 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:231:y:2025:i:c:s0167268125000332. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.