Where are you from? Cultural differences in public good experiments

We study the effect of cultural differences on contributions in a public good experiment, analysing real-time interactions between Italian and British subjects in their home countries. In the first treatment, subjects play in nationally homogeneous groups. In the second treatment, Italian and British subjects play in heterogeneous groups, knowing the nationality of the group members. In the third treatment, we control for a possible “country effect” by giving players no information on nationality. The data suggest that, in homogeneous groups, British subjects contribute significantly more to the public good; contributions are lower in heterogeneous groups; there is no country effect.