IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mac/wpaper/0108.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the Probability of Help

Author

Listed:
  • WDA Bryant

    (Department of Economics, Macquarie University)

Abstract

The experimental and field studies surveyed by Latane and Nida (1981) establish an inverse relationship between the probability that a person is helped and the size of the group of potential helpers. Harrington (2001) attempts to account for this phenomenon using a 'rational choice' model in which agents play Nash strategies. In Harrington's model the probability that anyone helps a person in trouble decreases as the number of potential helpers increases. Also, the probability that a victim receives help is bounded below and away from zero. This second implication of the model is somewhat at variance with the analysis of Hochman and Rogers (1969), Bergstrom (1970), Nakayama (1980) and Arrow (1981) where, if there are two rich people (potential helpers) and one poor person (victim), then 'helping' has the characteristics of a pure public good, with predictable consequences for the equilibrium level of help offered. The principle purpose of this paper is to extend the model of Harrington (2001) to include the Hochman and Rogers-Bergstrom-Nakayama-Arrow result as a special case.

Suggested Citation

  • WDA Bryant, 2001. "On the Probability of Help," Research Papers 0108, Macquarie University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:mac:wpaper:0108
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.econ.mq.edu.au/research/2001/Help.pdf
    File Function: First Version, 2001
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Altruism; Nash equilibrium; free riding; group size;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • D64 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Altruism; Philanthropy; Intergenerational Transfers

    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:mac:wpaper:0108. 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: Helen Boneham (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edmqqau.html .

    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.