Journal of Public Economic Theory最新文献

In this paper, we contribute to the topical debate on the welfare effects of a centralized policy setting within the federal union in the presence of transboundary pollution externalities that affect production possibilities. It is shown that when the production of federal jurisdictions generates spillover effects, which in turn result in spillback effects, harmonization of their public policies towards the uniform optimal cooperative level does not ensure welfare improvement for the federation. We analyze and identify federal policies harmonizing reforms that deliver Pareto improvement in the presence of spillback in addition to spillover effects. These reforms are designed to neutralize all the spillback effects by maintaining the aggregate level of spillover effects constant while increasing the welfare of the federation. This result holds irrespective of the nature and sign of the spillover and spillback effects, as well as for both small and large open economies.

In this field experiment involving ethnic and income groups in Vietnam, we explore the role of social signaling—a construct encompassing both status-seeking and public recognition—in charitable giving. We find that individuals from the Hoa (Chinese) ethnicity and those in higher income brackets are more prone to engage in social signaling by donating more. Conversely, the Khmer, influenced by their ethnic norms, are less likely to use donations as a form of social signaling. Our findings align with a multifaceted theoretical model that integrates social signaling and ethnic norms to explain the complexities of charitable giving behavior. This study not only enriches our understanding of why people donate but also underscores the nuanced interplay of social signaling and cultural norms.

This article develops a model of public good provision with social norms determined by network relationships. Individuals' wealth allocation preferences are guided by the benefit they obtain from a private good and a public good, and the social value they receive when following their neighbors in their contribution to the public good. We find conditions under which (i) redistributions of wealth will increase total giving if the transfer goes to the less norm-conformist agent, (ii) an increase in tastes for conformity of the weak contributors will increase total giving, and (iii) the deletion of a link between two contributors will increase total giving. Subsequently, examples in very small networks allow us to discuss how these results can help policymakers encourage the voluntary provision of public good.

We study Bayesian persuasion with local strategic substitutes in networks. A designer commits to a public signal to maximize total activity. Equilibria are characterized by the network's maximum $��\; ��k��$-insulated sets for each realization. We solve the optimal information structure and characterize beneficial persuasion. While agents individually prefer higher states, the designer's payoff is non-monotonic in the posterior mean due to substitution effects. This provides a rationale for downwardplaying mechanisms: revealing low states truthfully and mixing signals when high. Moreover, for tree, nested split, and core-periphery networks, the designer strictly benefits if the prior mean insulated set size is less than the highest state set size.

This study examines the strategic communication that occurs before voting under various voting rules. A group of imperfectly informed voters communicate before casting their votes in binary elections. The voters have partially conflicting interests: there is a correct candidate in some states of the world, while in others, voters disagree, and ideologies matter. This study demonstrates that truthful communication is never an equilibrium under any voting rule when the size of the electorate is sufficiently large.

This corrigendum amends the main results in Bhattacharya et al., henceforth BTS. We show that the closed-form solution in Proposition 3 of BTS is incorrect, and the individual contributions are nonlinear (rather than linear) in the cumulative collective contribution. In addition, when the impatience differential is large enough, the patient individuals (rather than impatient individuals) reduce the contributions as the project progresses toward completion. Finally, the project is completed earlier (rather than later) as we increase the difference in impatience.