AN EXPERIMENTAL-STUDY OF TIME-INDEPENDENT AND TIME-DEPENDENT EXTERNALITIES IN THE COMMONS

The use of common-pool resources (CPRs) implies the existence of appro priation externalities. Benchmark predictions are derived and experime nts conducted for a CPR game in which the appropriation externality is either time-independent or time-dependent. In the time-independent se tting, externalities are restricted to within a decision period. In th e time-dependent setting, externalities occur both within and across d ecision periods. Subject behavior is generally found to be consistent with noncooperative solution benchmarks. Further, efficiency tends to be lower in time-dependency settings, often with behavior that is best characterized as temporally myopic. (C) 1997 Academic Press.