In the face of global or regional environmental problems, do countries that take unilateral actions inspire other countries to curtail emissions? The effect of leadership at the individual level is investigated by the use ofa novel design ofa laboratory public bad experiment with a leader. Twelve groups of5 participants played the game twice with two treatments: 10 rounds with a leader and 10 rounds without a leader. The order ofthe treatmentswas balanced over groups. A significant (within-subject) effect of leadership is found. Followers invest, on average, 13% less in the public bad when there is a leader setting the good example as opposed to a situation with no leader. This produces benefits also to the leaders but not enough to recover all the costs of taking a leading position.
Andreoni, James . 1988. Why free ride? Strategies and learning in public good experiments. Journal of Public Economics37:291-304.
2.
Andreoni, James . 1995. Warm-glow versus cold-prickle: The effects of positive and negative framing on cooperation in experiments. Quarterly Journal of Economics110 (1): 1-21.
3.
Andreoni, James . 1998. Toward a theory ofcharitable fund-raising. Journal ofPolitical Economy106 (6): 1186-1213.
4.
Bardsley, Nicholas . 2000. Control without deception: Individual behaviour in free-riding experiments revisited. Experimental Economics3 (3): 215-240.
5.
Barrett, Scott . 1998. On the theory and diplomacy ofen vironmental treaty-making. Environmental and Resource Economics11 (3-4): 317-333.
6.
Berry, Frances S.1994. Innovation in public management: The adoption ofstrate gic planning. Public Administration Review54 (4): 322-330.
7.
Bianco, William T. , and Robert H. Bates. 1990. Cooperation by design: Leadership, structure, and collective dilemmas. American Political Science Review84 (1): 133-147.
8.
Bohnet, Iris, and Bruno S. Frey. 1995. Ist reden silber und schweigen gold? Eine ökonomische analyse. Zeitschrift für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften115:169-209.
9.
Bolton, Gary E. , and Axel Ockenfels. 2000. A theory of equity, reciprocity and competition. American Economic Review90 (1): 166-193.
10.
Bonetti, Shane . 1998. Experimental economics and deception. Journal of Economic Psychology19:377-395.
11.
Budescu, David V. , Amnon Rapoport, and Ramzi Suleiman. 1992. Simultaneous vs. sequential requests in resource dilemmas with incomplete information. Acta Psychologica80:297-310.
12.
Budescu, David , Ramzi Suleiman, and Amnon Rapoport. 1995. Positional order and group size effects in resource dilemmas with uncertain resources. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes61:225-238.
13.
Burlando, Roberto , and John D. Hey. 1997. Do Anglo-Saxons free-ride more?Journal of Public Economics64: 41-60.
14.
Calvert, Randall L.1992. Leadership and its basis in problems ofsocial coordination. International Political Science Review13 (1): 1-24.
15.
Camerer, Colin F. , Roberto A. Weber, and Marc Knez. 2000. Timing and virtual observability in ultimatum bargaining and “weak link” coordination games. Working paper, California Institute of Technology.
16.
Carraro, Carlo , and Domenico Siniscalco. 1998. International environmental agreements: Incentives and political economy. European Economic Review42:561-572.
17.
Collier, David , and Richard E. Messick. 1975. Prerequisites versus diffusion: Testing alternative explanations of social security adoption. American Political Science Review69 (4): 1299-1315.
18.
Cox, Robert H.1993. Creating welfare states in Czechoslovakia and Hungary: Why policymakers borrow ideas from the West. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy11:349-364.
19.
Croson, Rachel T. A.1996. Partners and strangers revisited. Economics Letters53:25-32.
20.
Dufwenberg, Martin , and Georg Kirchsteiger. 1998. A theory of sequential reciprocity. Discussion paper 9837, Tilburg University.
21.
Erev, Ido , and Amnon Rapoport. 1990. Provision ofstep-le vel public goods, the sequential contribution mechanism. Journal of Conflict Resolution34 (3): 401-425.
22.
Fehr, Ernst , and Klaus M. Schmidt. 1999. Atheory off airness, competition and cooperation. Quarterly Journal of Economics114 (3): 817-868.
23.
Fischbacher, Urs , Simon Gächter, and Ernst Fehr. 2001. Are people conditionally cooperative? Evidence from a public goods experiment. Economics Letters71:397-404.
24.
Frohlich, Norman , Joe A. Oppenheimer, and Oran R. Young. 1971. Political leadershipand collective goods. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
25.
Gray, Virginia . 1973. Innovation in the states: A diffusion study. American Political Science Review67 (4): 1174-1185.
26.
Heyes, Cecilia . 2001. Causes and consequences of imitation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences5 (6): 253-261.
27.
Hoel, Michael . 1991. Global environmental problems: The effects of unilateral actions taken by one country. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management20:55-70.
28.
Hoel, Michael . 1997. Coordination ofenvironmental policy for transboundary environmental problems?Journal of Public Economics66:199-224.
29.
Huck, Steffen , Hans-Theo Normann, and Jörg Oechssler. 2000. Does information about competitors’actions increase or decrease competition in experimental oligopoly markets?International Journal of Industrial Organization18 (1): 39-57.
30.
Isaac, R. Mark , and James M. Walker. 1988a. Group size effects in public goods provision: The voluntary contributions mechanism. Quarterly Journal of Economics103:179-199.
31.
Isaac, R. Mark , and James M. Walker. 1988b. Communication and free-riding behavior: The voluntary contributions mechanism. Economic Inquiry26:585-608.
32.
Isaac, R. Mark , and James M. Walker. 1991. Costly communication: An experiment in a nested public goods problem. In Contemporary laboratory research in political economy, edited byT. Palfrey. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
33.
Keser, Claudia . 1996. Voluntary contributions to a public good when partial contribution is a dominant strategy. Economics Letters50 (3): 359-366.
34.
Kroll, Stephan , John A. List, and Charles F. Mason. 1999. International environmental problems as twolevel games: An experimental investigation. Working paper, St. Lawrence University.
35.
Ledyard, John . 1995. Public goods: A survey ofe xperimental research. In The handbook of experimental economics, edited by A. E. Roth and J. Kagel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
36.
Levine, David K.1998. Modeling altruism and spitefulness in experiment. Reviewof Economics Dynamics1 (3): 593-622.
37.
Mailath, George J.1998. Do people play Nash equilibrium? Lessons from evolutionary game theory. Journal of Economic Literature36:1347-1374.
38.
Meidinger, Claude , Bernard Sinclair-Desgagné, and Marie-Claire Villeval. 2002. Leadership in teams: Signaling or reciprocating? Paper presented at the ESA meetings, June, Boston.
39.
Morris, Michael W. , Damien L. H. Sim, and Vittorio Girotto. 1995. Time ofdecision, ethical obligation, and causal illusion. In Negotiation as a social process, edited by R. M. Kramer and D. M. Messick. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
40.
Ortmann, Andreas , and Ralph Hertwig. 2002. The costs ofdeception: Evidence from psychology. Experimental Economics5 (2): 111-132.
41.
Ostrom, Elinor , James Walker, and Roy Gardner. 1992. Covenants with and without a sword: Self-governance is possible. American Political Science Review86 (2): 404-417.
42.
Potters, Jan , Martin Sefton, and Lise Vesterlund. 2001. Why announce leadership contributions?An experimental study ofthe signaling and reciprocity hypotheses. CentER Discussion Paper 2001-100, CentER, Tilburg University.
43.
Rabin, Matthew . 1993. Incorporating fairness into game theory and economics. American Economic Review83:1281-1302.
44.
Rapoport, Amnon . 1997. Order ofplay in strategically equivalent games in extensive form. International Journal of Game Theory26:113-136.
45.
Romano, Richard , and Huseyim Yildirim. 2001. Why charities announce donations: A positive perspective. Journal of Public Economics81:423-447.
46.
Ross, Edward Alsworth . 1919. Social psychology: An outline and source book. New York: Macmillan.
47.
Roth, Alvin E.1995. Bargaining experiments. In The handbook of experimental economics, edited by A. E. Roth and J. Kagel. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
48.
Savage, Leonard Jimmie . 1954. Foundations of statistics. New York: John Wiley.
49.
Sefton, Martin , and Richard Steinberg. 1996. Reward structures in public good experiments. Journal of Public Economics61:263-287.
50.
Selten, Reinhard. 1967. Die strategiemethode zur erforschung des eingeschränkt rationalen verhaltens im rahmen eines oligopolexperimentes. In Beiträge zur experimentellen wirtschaftforschung, edited by H. Sauermann. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck).
51.
Shafir, Eldar , and Amos Tversky. 1992. Thinking through uncertainty: Nonconsequential reasoning and choice. Cognitive Psychology24:449-474.
52.
Smith, J. Donald , and Henry R. Glick. 1995. The right to die: Across-national analysis ofagenda setting and innovation. Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy13:479-501.
53.
Smith, Vernon L.1982. Microeconomic systems as an experimental science. American Economic Review72 (5): 923-955.
54.
van der Heijden, Eline , and Erling Moxnes. 1999. Information feedback in public bad games: Across-country experiment. Working paper no.42/1999, Center for Research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF), Bergen, Norway.
55.
van der Heijden, Eline , and Erling Moxnes2000. Leadership and following in a public bad experiment. Report R13/00, Center for Research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF), Bergen, Norway.
56.
Walker, Jack L.1969. The diffusion of innovations among the American states. American Political Science Review63 (4): 880-899.
57.
Weimann, Joachim . 1994. Individual behaviour in a free riding experiment. Journal of Public Economics54 (2): 185-200.
58.
Wilson, Rick K. , and Carl M. Rhodes. 1997. Leadership and credibility in N-person coordination games. Journal of Conflict Resolution41 (6): 767-791.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
