Title：Risk as excuses for selfishness: Evidence from public goods games with rice farmers in four developing countries

　　 Schedule: Nov 26, Fri 12:00-1:00 PM

　　 Location: Rm 315, Chengming Hall (诚明楼) & 腾讯会议 263 409 868

　　 Abstract：we conduct a lab-in-the-field experiment with rice farmers in four developing countries. The main experiment contains five differently modified public goods games framed as irrigation provision problems. Differences between the games are the existence of collective risk and private risk, and the possibility of buying (partial) insurance. Adopting a within-subject design, we find that compared to the baseline treatment where there is no risk at all, both introducing collective risk and introducing private risk while providing partial insurance significantly reduce farmers’ contributions to the public good. Traditional economic theories with pure uncertainty preferences or altruism cannot explain our results. Moreover, we find that insurance induces mainly contextual-dependent effects on cooperation behavior and its role as a risk-reduction tool is of second-order importance. We propose an alternative explanation that rice farmers use risk as excuses for selfishness. Our results have strong implications for public policy design and its evaluation in the developing world.

　

题目：风险是自私的借口？来自四个发展中国家的实验证据

摘要：我们对四个发展中国家的富农实施了实验，其中包含了五个调整过的公共品博弈。这些博弈的差异主要是全体风险和个人风险，以及购买保险的可能性。我们发现，相比于没有风险的博弈，引入全体风险和个人风险同时提供部分保险会降低农人对公共品的贡献。传统的经济理论无法解释这个现象。此外，我们发现保险对于降低风险的效果不是非常重要。我们提出一个解释，富农们只是把风险当作自私的借口。

 

　Introduction：郑家昆，博士毕业于图卢兹经济学院，原牛津大学青年访问学者、德国马克斯普朗克人类发展研究所优秀学者，2020年度国家优秀自费留学生奖学金获得者，现为中国人民大学财政金融学院助理教授。近年来以独立作者的身份将论文发表于 Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Health Economics  等国际经济学期刊。此外，他还多次担任 Management Science, Journal of the European Economic Association, Journal of Behavior and Organization, Journal of Risk and Insurance 等国际经济学期刊的审稿人。