IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/reecon/v71y2017i1p86-101.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Passing the Buck On the acceptance of responsibility

Author

Listed:
  • Bolle, Friedel

Abstract

In the Passing the Buck game, the n members of a group decide in a given order whether or not to incur costs so that they can fix a certain problem for the benefit of the group. Passing the Buck means that one relies on the service of a successor. The decision is influenced by social preferences and by strategic considerations. We derive three main conclusions from experiments with n=3 and n=4. (i) The unique perfect Baysian equilibrium of the Passing the Buck game with incomplete information about the preferences of other players generally fits the data, however with two interesting exceptions. (ii) Backward induction breaks down if it requires more than two steps, i.e., for the first player in the game with n=4. (iii) Making one of the members of the group an “expert” who alone is competent to fix the problem is connected with a change of social preferences.

Suggested Citation

  • Bolle, Friedel, 2017. "Passing the Buck On the acceptance of responsibility," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 71(1), pages 86-101.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:reecon:v:71:y:2017:i:1:p:86-101
    DOI: 10.1016/j.rie.2016.07.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090944316301338
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.rie.2016.07.003?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.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Guth, Werner & Levati, M. Vittoria & Sutter, Matthias & van der Heijden, Eline, 2007. "Leading by example with and without exclusion power in voluntary contribution experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(5-6), pages 1023-1042, June.
    2. Chen, Xiao-Ping & Au, Wing Tung & Komorita, S. S., 1996. "Sequential Choice in a Step-Level Public Goods Dilemma: The Effects of Criticality and Uncertainty," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 37-47, January.
    3. Stahl Dale O. & Wilson Paul W., 1995. "On Players' Models of Other Players: Theory and Experimental Evidence," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 218-254, July.
    4. Duffy, John & Ochs, Jack & Vesterlund, Lise, 2007. "Giving little by little: Dynamic voluntary contribution games," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(9), pages 1708-1730, September.
    5. Bartling, Björn & Fischbacher, Urs & Schudy, Simeon, 2015. "Pivotality and responsibility attribution in sequential voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 133-139.
    6. Jeroen Weesie, 1994. "Incomplete Information and Timing in the Volunteer's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(3), pages 557-585, September.
    7. Regine Oexl & Zachary Grossman, 2013. "Shifting the blame to a powerless intermediary," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(3), pages 306-312, September.
    8. Newey, Whitney K & West, Kenneth D, 1987. "Hypothesis Testing with Efficient Method of Moments Estimation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(3), pages 777-787, October.
    9. McKelvey Richard D. & Palfrey Thomas R., 1995. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Normal Form Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 6-38, July.
    10. Ernst Fehr & Klaus M. Schmidt, 1999. "A Theory of Fairness, Competition, and Cooperation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(3), pages 817-868.
    11. Nagel, Rosemarie, 1995. "Unraveling in Guessing Games: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1313-1326, December.
    12. Andersen, Steffen & Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten Igel & Rutström, Elisabet E., 2010. "Behavioral econometrics for psychologists," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 553-576, August.
    13. Diekmann, Andreas, 1993. "Cooperation in an Asymmetric Volunteer's Dilemma Game: Theory and Experimental Evidence," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 22(1), pages 75-85.
    14. Charles A. Holt & Jacob K. Goeree, 1999. "Stochastic Game Theory: For Playing Games, Not Just for Doing Theory," Virginia Economics Online Papers 306, University of Virginia, Department of Economics.
    15. Friedel Bolle & Philipp E. Otto, 2016. "Role-dependent Social Preferences," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(332), pages 704-740, October.
    16. John R. Hamman & George Loewenstein & Roberto A. Weber, 2010. "Self-Interest through Delegation: An Additional Rationale for the Principal-Agent Relationship," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1826-1846, September.
    17. Andreas Diekmann, 1985. "Volunteer's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 29(4), pages 605-610, December.
    18. Brit Grosskopf & Rosemarie Nagel, 2007. "Rational reasoning or adaptive behavior? Evidence from two-person beauty contest games," Economics Working Papers 1068, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
    19. Binmore, Ken & Shaked, Avner, 2010. "Experimental economics: Where next?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 87-100, January.
    20. Björn Bartling & Urs Fischbacher, 2012. "Shifting the Blame: On Delegation and Responsibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 67-87.
    21. Bilodeau, Marc & Slivinski, Al, 1996. "Toilet cleaning and department chairing: Volunteering a public service," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 299-308, February.
    22. Jeroen Weesie, 1993. "Asymmetry and Timing in the Volunteer's Dilemma," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(3), pages 569-590, September.
    23. Bester, Helmut & Guth, Werner, 1998. "Is altruism evolutionarily stable?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 193-209, February.
    24. Richard Mckelvey & Thomas Palfrey, 1998. "Quantal Response Equilibria for Extensive Form Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 1(1), pages 9-41, June.
    25. Raymond Duch & Wojtek Przepiorka & Randolph Stevenson, 2015. "Responsibility Attribution for Collective Decision Makers," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 59(2), pages 372-389, February.
    26. Hironori Otsubo & Amnon Rapoport, 2008. "Dynamic Volunteer's Dilemmas over a Finite Horizon," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(6), pages 961-984, December.
    27. Ayala Arad & Ariel Rubinstein, 2012. "The 11-20 Money Request Game: A Level-k Reasoning Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(7), pages 3561-3573, December.
    28. Lucas C. Coffman, 2011. "Intermediation Reduces Punishment (and Reward)," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 77-106, November.
    29. Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Breitmoser, Yves & Bolle, Friedel, 2015. "Voluntary contributions by consent or dissent," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 106-121.
    30. Cherie D. Maestas & Lonna Rae Atkeson & Thomas Croom & Lisa A. Bryant, 2008. "Shifting the Blame: Federalism, Media, and Public Assignment of Blame Following Hurricane Katrina," Publius: The Journal of Federalism, CSF Associates Inc., vol. 38(4), pages 609-632, Fall.
    31. Bolle, Friedel, 2000. "Is altruism evolutionarily stable? And envy and malevolence?: Remarks on Bester and Guth," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 131-133, May.
    32. Breitmoser, Yves, 2012. "Strategic reasoning in p-beauty contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 555-569.
    33. Binmore, Ken & Shaked, Avner, 2010. "Experimental Economics: Where Next? Rejoinder," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 120-121, January.
    34. Colin F. Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin-Kuan Chong, 2004. "A Cognitive Hierarchy Model of Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 119(3), pages 861-898.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Shakun D. Mago & Jennifer Pate, 2023. "Greed and fear: Competitive and charitable priming in a threshold volunteer's dilemma," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 61(1), pages 138-161, January.
    2. Friedel Bolle & Philipp E. Otto, 2022. "Voting behavior under outside pressure: promoting true majorities with sequential voting?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(4), pages 711-740, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bolle, Friedel, 2017. "A behavioral theory of equilibrium selection," Discussion Papers 392, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.
    2. Friedel Bolle & Philipp E. Otto, 2022. "The flip side of power," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 190(1), pages 75-92, January.
    3. Külpmann, Philipp & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2022. "Comparing theories of one-shot play out of treatment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    4. Nagel, Rosemarie & Bühren, Christoph & Frank, Björn, 2017. "Inspired and inspiring: Hervé Moulin and the discovery of the beauty contest game," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 191-207.
    5. Jörg Spiller & Friedel Bolle, 2017. "Experimental investigations of coordination games: high success rates, invariant behavior, and surprising dynamics," Discussion Paper Series RECAP15 28, RECAP15, European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder).
    6. Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Breitmoser, Yves & Bolle, Friedel, 2015. "Voluntary contributions by consent or dissent," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 106-121.
    7. Spiller, Jörg & Bolle, Friedel, 2017. "Experimental investigations of binary threshold public good games," Discussion Papers 393, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Department of Business Administration and Economics.
    8. Georganas, Sotiris & Healy, Paul J. & Weber, Roberto A., 2015. "On the persistence of strategic sophistication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 369-400.
    9. Choo, Lawrence C.Y & Kaplan, Todd R., 2014. "Explaining Behavior in the "11-20" Game," MPRA Paper 52808, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Jacob K. Goeree & Charles A. Holt, 2001. "Ten Little Treasures of Game Theory and Ten Intuitive Contradictions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(5), pages 1402-1422, December.
    11. Breitmoser, Yves, 2019. "Knowing me, imagining you: Projection and overbidding in auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 423-447.
    12. Benndorf, Volker & Kübler, Dorothea & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2015. "Privacy concerns, voluntary disclosure of information, and unraveling: An experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 43-59.
    13. Argenton, Cédric & Potters, Jan & Yang, Yadi, 2023. "Receiving credit: On delegation and responsibility," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 158(C).
    14. Deepti Bhatia & Urs Fischbacher & Jan Hausfeld & Regina Stumpf, 2024. "Blame and praise: responsibility attribution patterns in decision chains," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 27(3), pages 637-663, July.
    15. Juan D. Carrillo & Thomas R. Palfrey, 2009. "The Compromise Game: Two-Sided Adverse Selection in the Laboratory," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(1), pages 151-181, February.
    16. Breitmoser, Yves & Tan, Jonathan H.W. & Zizzo, Daniel John, 2014. "On the beliefs off the path: Equilibrium refinement due to quantal response and level-k," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 102-125.
    17. Colin Camerer & Teck-Hua Ho & Juin Kuan Chong, 2003. "A cognitive hierarchy theory of one-shot games: Some preliminary results," Levine's Bibliography 506439000000000495, UCLA Department of Economics.
    18. Roman Inderst & Kiryl Khalmetski & Axel Ockenfels, 2019. "Sharing Guilt: How Better Access to Information May Backfire," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3322-3336, July.
    19. García-Pola, Bernardo & Iriberri, Nagore & Kovářík, Jaromír, 2020. "Non-equilibrium play in centipede games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 391-433.
    20. Benjamin Patrick Evans & Mikhail Prokopenko, 2024. "Bounded rationality for relaxing best response and mutual consistency: the quantal hierarchy model of decision making," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 96(1), pages 71-111, February.

    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:reecon:v:71:y:2017:i:1:p:86-101. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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/inca/622941 .

    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.