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

Arbeitspapier

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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• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: CSLE Discussion Paper ; No. 99-09

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Noncooperative Games
• Subject: Samaritan's Dilemma ; Game Theory ; Altruismus ; Spieltheorie ; Zeitkonsistenz ; Theorie

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Schmidtchen, Dieter
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): Universität des Saarlandes, Center for the Study of Law and Economics (CSLE)
• (where): Saarbrücken
• (when): 1999

Further information

• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/23060