To Help or not to Help: The Samaritan's Dilemma Revisited

Helping somebody may undermine his incentives to work. What Buchanan identified more than 25 years ago as the Samaritan's dilemma is basically a time-inconsistency problem. The paper discusses possible solutions of the dilemma such as punishment within an iterated game, reshaping the game in the direction of a dynamic one-shot game and the delegation of the power of decision to an agent. The paper shows that only the latter option works.

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Year of publication:	1999
Authors:	Schmidtchen, Dieter
Institutions:	Forschungsstelle zur ökonomischen Analyse des Rechts, Abteilung Wirtschaftswissenschaft
Subject:	Samaritan's Dilemma \| Game Theory

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Extent:	application/pdf
Series:	CSLE Discussion Paper Series.
Type of publication:	Book / Working Paper
Language:	English
Notes:	Number 99-09
Classification:	C72 - Noncooperative Games
Source:	RePEc - Research Papers in Economics

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10008509600