Sustained cooperation in a public good game: evidence from Guyana

Abstract

Two consistent findings from the experimental literature on public good games are that cooperation declines over time and cooperation is lower in countries with weak institutions. These findings, however, are primarily based on experiments in Europe, North America, and Asia. There is little evidence from South and Central America. In an experiment conducted in Guyana, we found consistent, indeed rising, levels of cooperation over time. The robustness of this result was checked across three different treatments and has high power (a total of 176 subjects). Our results indicate that more experimental work is needed to fully understand willingness to cooperate in public good games. Guyana has relatively weak institutions and yet cooperation remained high.