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

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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.

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