Leadership and cooperation in public goodsexperiments

Leadership is important for the well-functioning of organizations. Weexamine the effects of leadership on contributions in public goods experiments.Leadership by example is implemented by letting one groupmember contribute to the public good before followers do. Such leadershipincreases contributions in comparison to the standard voluntarycontribution mechanism, especially so when it goes along with authority,which we implement by granting the leader ostracism power.Whether leadership is fixed or rotating among group members has nosignificant influence on contributions. Only a minority of groups succeedsin endogenously installing a leader, even though groups withleaders are much more efficient than groups without a leader.