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.

MoreLess

Year of publication:	1999
Authors:	Schmidtchen, Dieter
Publisher:	Saarbrücken : Universität des Saarlandes, Center for the Study of Law and Economics (CSLE)
Subject:	Altruismus \| Spieltheorie \| Zeitkonsistenz \| Theorie \| Samaritan's Dilemma \| Game Theory

More details

Series:	CSLE Discussion Paper ; 99-09
Type of publication:	Book / Working Paper
Type of publication (narrower categories):	Working Paper
Language:	English
Other identifiers:	503170860 [GVK] hdl:10419/23060 [Handle] RePEc:zbw:csledp:9909 [RePEc]
Classification:	C72 - Noncooperative Games
Source:	EconStor

Persistent link: https://www.econbiz.de/10010296908