Instructions

You are taking part in an economic experiment. You can earn a significant sum of money, depending on the decisions and the decisions of other participants. It is therefore very important that you pay attention to the following points. All decisions in the experiment are made anonymously. For your participation in this experiment, you receive an initial income of 10 Dollar. Your additional income depends on your decisions. In this experiment, we calculate in Points, rather than in Dollar. Your entire income will therefore initially be calculated in Points. The total sum of Points will later be calculated in Dollar as follows:

1 Point = 1 Dollar will be transferred to your Prolific at the end of the experiment.

The experiment is divided into separate periods. It consists of a total of XXX periods. In each period you will play the same game. Participants are randomly assigned to groups of five. Each group, thus, has four other members, apart from you. During these XXX periods, the constellation of your group of five will remain unaltered. You will therefore be in the same group for XXX periods. Please note that you and the other group members decide anonymously. That is, other group members cannot match your decision with your identity. At the end of the experiment, we will randomly determine one out of the XXX periods to be decisive for your payoff. Therefore, the outcome of every period potentially determines your payoff. The following pages outline the exact procedure of the experiment. Each of the XXX periods contains the following decision situation.

The Decision Situation

In each group, there are four participants of Type A and one participant of Type B. At the beginning of the experiment, we will randomly determine one member of your group to be player "B". The player will be the same throughout the entire XXX periods. That is, you keep your type throughout the experiment.

At the beginning of each period, each participant is given XXX Points to the private account and faces the same decision problem. Your decision (as well as the decision of all other group members) is to divide Points between a private account and a group account. The difference between players of Type A and Type B is when this decision can be made and whether a player can transfer Points from the group account into her private account.

Player A

Each of the four players of Type A has to decide whether to transfer Points from her private account to the group account. Transfers range between 0 and 10 (only integers). After this decision, all four players of Type A are asked to enter what they think the overall contribution of all players of Type A is in this round, and what they expect the transfer decision of player B to be. Players can earn Points for accuracy (as described later). The payoff relevant round for the accurate expectations is randomly selected at the end of the experiment independent from which round is selected as payoff relevant for the transfer decision.

Player B

After all the transfers of Type A players, Player B observes the overall sum of Points in the group account (but not the individual transfers). Player B can then decide whether to (i) transfer Points from her private account to the group account or whether to (ii) do the reverse, i.e. transfer Points from the group account to her private account.

Payoff