Journal of Public Economic Theory最新文献

The minimum approval mechanism (MAM) was introduced by Masuda et al. (2014) as a mechanism aimed at mitigating free riding in the social dilemma context of a public good game. The MAM is a two-stage mechanism which theoretically achieves the socially optimum level of public good provision, according to various equilibrium concepts (e.g., backward elimination of weakly dominated strategies, level-k, or minimax regret). We study the robustness of this mechanism to the introduction of endowment heterogeneity. We explore, theoretically and experimentally, how endowment inequalities affect the effectiveness of the MAM at improving the level of provision. We find that the mechanism is still Pareto-improving under endowment heterogeneity, but that its efficiency diminishes as inequality is increased. Our experimental findings indicate a significant weakening of the mechanism under endowment inequalities, surpassing our theoretical predictions. A close examination of individual behaviors reveals a significant drop in contributions compared to the uniform case, prompted by even minor inequalities. Intriguingly, our findings challenge conventional assumptions by showing that inequality aversion drives contributions in a public good game with endowment disparities only under certain assumptions. We explore the impact of beliefs about the contributions of advantaged players as potential motivations through guilt aversion and Kantian preferences.

A shared good is an impure public good in which personalized consumptions are produced by groups using a sharing technology. Rivalry in consumption is captured by the shape of this technology. Private goods and pure public goods are special cases in which there is complete rivalry and no rivalry, respectively. A competitive shared goods equilibrium is defined in which there are markets for all goods, there are personalized prices for the consumption of shared goods, and both firms and groups are profit maximizers. When all shared goods are private (resp. public), this equilibrium is a Walrasian (resp. Lindahl) equilibrium. Sufficient conditions for the existence of a competitive shared goods equilibrium are identified. An alternative equilibrium concept in which groups behave cooperatively towards their beneficiaries is also considered and an equilibrium existence theorem for it is established.

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.