Journal of Public Economic Theory最新文献

We study a public goods game with heterogeneous agents who care about their own payoff as well as that of the player who receives the lowest payoff. The weight of own payoff varies across players and is private information. We first develop a theoretical model and then test the predictions of our model in a laboratory setting under different parameter conditions. In both our model and experiments, introducing a coalition formation stage before making a contribution decision enables sorting of players according to their preferences, resulting in higher contributions to the public good. Additionally, we find that participants in our experiment take previous period outcomes into account while making current period decisions. These results help explain successful coalitions, like International Environmental Agreements, that are effective in creating real-world public goods like reductions in carbon emissions.

Economic shocks can be felt for years or even decades. Social welfare functions that exhibit aversion to persistent consumption risk address several gaps in the social discounting literature. First, they allow analyzing the impact of risk aversion and dependences on discount rates. Second, they generate results with normative appeal: Persistent risk decreases the discount rates. Moreover, in the presence of persistent risk, the discount rates decrease with the social planner's risk aversion and her planning horizon. In addition, I provide an extended Ramsey equation for the persistent risk-averse social planner as well as a numerical application.

We analyze voluntary public good contributions with incomplete information. A fundraiser chooses whether to disclose or withhold contributions as they occur, and two contributors choose the size and (eventually) the order of their contributions. Contributions made without announcement—thus simultaneous—minimize free-riding incentives of contributors with low valuations, whereas contributions with disclosure of past donations—thus sequential—minimize those of contributors with high valuations. To maximize aggregate contributions, a fundraiser permits sequential contributions when high valuations are prevalent or significantly exceed low valuations. Otherwise, simultaneous contributions are preferred.

This paper introduces a novel binary stability property for voting rules—called binary self-selectivity—by which a society considering whether to replace its voting rule using itself in pairwise elections will choose not to do so. In Theorem 1, we show that a neutral voting rule is binary self-selective if and only if it is universally self-selective. We then use this equivalence to show, in Corollary 1, that under the unrestricted strict preference domain, a unanimous and neutral voting rule is binary self-selective if and only if it is dictatorial. In Theorem 2 and Corollary 2, we show that whenever there is a strong Condorcet winner; a unanimous, neutral, and anonymous voting rule is binary self-selective (or universally self-selective) if and only if it is the Condorcet voting rule.

We study a two-stage contest between two players who differ in ability, with a prize awarded in the second stage. In the first stage, players compete, and the winner enjoys a reduced effort cost in the second stage. The second-stage contest is simultaneous, while the first-stage contest can be simultaneous or sequential. We investigate how a sequential first stage affects the catching-up and discouragement effects between players. Additionally, we explore the optimal first-stage timing structure of contest designers with different objectives, that is, maximizing effort in the second stage, total effort across both stages, or the winner's total effort. Interestingly, a designer focused on maximizing second-stage effort prefers a simultaneous first-stage contest, contrary to the conventional intuition that the stronger player should lead.

We study coalition formation in many-to-one matching models from a competitive equilibrium perspective. We cover both models with and models without monetary transfers. A first notion to do so is the one of Drèze equilibrium, which we extend to the many-to-one setup. A second concept is expectational equilibrium. It turns out that under very weak assumptions, we obtain an equivalence between these concepts, so both lead to exactly the same predictions. Since the equivalence might be between empty sets, we also present sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium. The existence proof is based on an adjustment process.