Path of intertemporal cooperation and limits to turn-taking behavior

Cooperation can take several forms when a group of people interact repeatedly over time. Turn-taking is one such form of intertemporal cooperation that is observed in various daily activities, but at the same time, remains under-studied in the economics literature. We report results from experiments designed to investigate the path of intertemporal cooperation in three-person finitely repeated public good games without communication. Each round, only a subset of individuals is needed to contribute in order to generate a public benefit to all group members. Incidence of perfect turn-taking is limited to settings where the costs are homogeneous. When the perfect turn-taking path is at odds with efficiency, players seldom engage in taking turns. Private information about costs changes the timing of individual decisions within each round. A timed contribution protocol limits the frequency of miscoordinated outcomes every round. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.