Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-tbj44 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-31T14:09:11.816Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

House money effects in public good experiments: Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Glenn W. Harrison
Glenn W. Harrison*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida, USA
*
e-mail: gharrison@research.bus.ucf.edu.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We reconsider evidence from experiments that claim to show that using “house money” in standard public goods experiments has no effect on behavior. We show that it does have an effect when one examines the data using appropriate statistical methods that consider individual-level responses and account for the error structure of the panel data.

Keywords

Public goodsExperimental economics

JEL classification

D7: Analysis of Collective Decision-Making C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Economics , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , December 2007 , pp. 429 - 437
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 Economic Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

I am grateful for comments from two referees and an editor. All data and statistical code are available for public access at the ExLab Digital Library located at http://exlab.bus.ucf.edu.

References

Ballinger, T. P., & Wilcox, N. T. (1997). Decisions, error and heterogeneity. Economic Journal, 107, 1090–1105.10.1111/j.1468-0297.1997.tb00009.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Botelho, A., Harrison, G. W., Pinto, L. M. C., & Rutström, E. E. (2005). Testing static game theory with dynamic experiments: A case study of public goods. Working Paper 05-25, Department of Economics, College of Business Administration, University of Central Florida.Google Scholar
Camerer, C. (2003). Behavioral Game Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Cherry, T. L., Kroll, S., & Shogren, J. F. (2005). The impact of endowment heterogeneity and origin on public good contributions: Evidence from the lab. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 57, 357–365.10.1016/j.jebo.2003.11.010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, J. (2002). House money effects in public good experiments. Experimental Economics, 5(3), 223–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, D. D., & Holt, C. A. (1993) Experimental Economics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691233376CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hardin, J., & Hilbe, J. (2001). Generalized Linear Models and Extensions. College Station, TX: Stata Corporation.Google Scholar
Hardin, J., & Hilbe, J. (2003) Generalized Estimating Equations. Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC.Google Scholar
Hey, J. D. (2005). Why we should not be silent about noise. Experimental Economics, 8(4), 325–345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liang, K-Y., & Zeger, S. L. (1986). Longitudinal data analysis using generalized linear models. Biometrika, 73, 13–22.10.1093/biomet/73.1.13CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nelder, J. A., & Wedderburn, R. W. M. (1972). Generalized linear models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society-SeriesA, 135(3), 370–384.10.2307/2344614CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pagan, A., and Ullah, A. (1999). Nonparametric Econometrics. New York: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511612503CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, V. L. (1982). Microeconomic systems as an experimental science. American Economic Review, 72(5), 923–955.Google Scholar
StataCorp (2003a). Stata Statistical Software: Release 8.0. College Station, TX: Stata Corporation.Google Scholar
StataCorp (2003b). Stata Cross-Sectional Time-Series Reference Manual: Release 8.0. College Station, TX: Stata Corporation.Google Scholar
Wilcox, N. T. (2006). Theories of learning in games and heterogeneity bias. Econometrica, 74(5), 12711292.10.1111/j.1468-0262.2006.00704.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wooldridge, J. M. (2002). Econometric Analysis of Cross Section and Panel Data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar