Axel Sonntag (University of Vienna, IHS) presents his work on "Information defaults in repeated public good provision" on October 12 from 10am - 12 noon in the VCEE Seminar (SR 1, Oskar-Morgenstern Platz 1).

Abstract:
We present an experiment on information defaults and information seeking in a repeated public good provision setting. In our experiment the default is one either with or without information about others’ contributions, and having information comes with a positive, zero or negative financial incentive. When information comes without a financial incentive or even is financially beneficial, subjects choose to have the information, but around a third have the information even when this is costly. Moreover, a default of not having information about the others’ contributions leads to a slower unraveling of cooperation, independent of the financial incentives of having information. This slower unraveling is explained by the beliefs about others’ contributions in these treatments. A secondary informational default effect appears to take place. When the default is no information, subjects do not seek information more often but, conditional on considering financial incentives, they tend to believe that more other subjects seek information.