A Means of Generating Classroom Involvement

Over the past several years, two points made by authors in Classroom Expernomics have changed the way I teach my Intermediate Microeconomic Theory students about the free-rider paradox. First, Hoaas and Drouillard [1994, p. 6] warned that participation in a public goods experiment was not sufficient to understand the paradox, and advised "postexperiment explanation." Second, Stodder [1994, pp. 1-2] persuasively argued that in many classrooms the voluntary contributions motive is "denigrated," either intentionally or without thought.