Public Goods Provision in a Network Formation Game

Speaker：HE Siming（Associate Professor, School of Economics, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics）

Host：YANG Yang, Associate Professor, Lingnan College

Time and Date：14:30-17:00, Mar. 4, 2022

Venue: Room 801, MBA building

Language: English +Chinese

Abstract:

We investigate how people coordinate on public goods provision in a network formation game. In this game, people first form network by bilateral linking, with or without a link cost, and then make contribution to public goods that benefit the people directedly linked in the network. Theoretically, there are two coordination patterns: splitting and alternation, and the latter is more efficient. Further, a higher link cost may help achieve alternation via a smaller network, which can result in higher efficiency. We vary the link cost in the laboratory experiment, and find that people dominantly converge to splitting instead of alternation, and although they tend to build smaller networks when the link cost increases, they fail to alternate even in the two-player network.

 Profile of the speaker:

He is an associate professor and doctoral supervisor of the School of Economics of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, and obtained a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Amsterdam. His research fields are behavioral economics and experimental economics, and his results have been published in internationally renowned journals such as Management Science, Journal of Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behavior. Presided over the Outstanding Youth Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China; selected as Shanghai Pujiang Scholar and Chenguang Scholar..