Publication Date
2016
Journal or Book Title
PLOS ONE
Abstract
Understanding the causal impact of beliefs on contributions in Threshold Public Goods (TPGs) is particularly important since the social optimum can be supported as a Nash Equilibrium and best-response contributions are a function of beliefs. Unfortunately, investigations of the impact of beliefs on behavior are plagued with endogeneity concerns. We create a set of instruments by cleanly and exogenously manipulating beliefs without deception. Tests indicate that the instruments are valid and relevant. Perhaps surprisingly, we fail to find evidence that beliefs are endogenous in either the one-shot or repeated-decision settings. TPG allocations are determined by a base contribution and beliefs in a one shot-setting. In the repeated-decision environment, once we instrument for first-round allocations, we find that second-round allocations are driven equally by beliefs and history. Moreover, we find that failing to instrument prior decisions overstates their importance.
DOI
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147043
Volume
11
Issue
2
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Funder
Funding for this project was provided by a University of Massachusetts Amherst Social and Behavioral Science Undergraduate Student Research Grant to Matthew Denny, UMass SOAR Fund
Recommended Citation
de Oliveira, Angela C.M.; Spraggon, John M.; and Denny, Matthew J., "Instrumenting Beliefs in Threshold Public Goods" (2016). PLOS ONE. 202.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0147043