Experimental economics and the free rider hypothesis: a case study in a slum area in the city of Recife / Economia experimental e a hipÃtese do free rider: um estudo de caso em comunidade carente da cidade do Recife

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2005

RESUMO

This work analyses the behavior of members of a community living in a slum area in the city of Recife. The main goal was to experimentally verify the free rider behavior. The author created a situation which simulated the acquisition of a public good. This was represented by the economic choice of applying an arbitrary endowment either in a public or a private investment. Subjects were interviewed in their own environment and the sample was divided into two groups of 20 youth and two groups of 20 adults. Results show that people from this area do not follow the behavior described by the free rider hypothesis, despite a high frequency of noncooperative decisions â 52% of the youth donated their resources in an amount insufficient to obtain the benefits from the public good, while this rate raise to 60% among the adults. Besides the quantitative and qualitative results, this work contributed to the literature by its methodology to study a specific social group not well analyzed in experimental economics: agents in precarious surviving conditions, such as access to a formal job, education, health care and public sanitation

ASSUNTO(S)

economia experimental economia free rider hypothesis hipÃtese do free rider teoria dos jogos experimental economics game theory

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