Journal of Public Economic Theory最新文献

We extend Bergstrom, Blume, and Varian's (1986) model to a non-cooperative approach where voluntary contributions and taxes coexist to finance public goods. After obtaining the uniqueness of equilibrium, we present different properties of the outcomes, showing the role that the taxes play and the impact on voluntary contributions. We also identify conditions ensuring neutrality. Finally, we present some remarks on welfare and efficiency, pointing out the second-best solution and identifying conditions for efficiency.

We investigate the impacts of investment in environmental (or green) research and development (R&D) in the context of a contest with endogenous rewards, known as R&D tournaments. The firm that “wins“ the tournament is the one which develops the most effective technology at reducing emissions and gains sole property rights in using that technology. This reduces the burden of the emission fee which the winning firm faces, while also lowering the fee all firms face. We find that the tournament induces firms to invest more than in a non-tournament R&D model except at high levels of green investment cost.

We analyze the determinants of individual vaccination decisions and their implications on the aggregate immunization coverage and disease prevalence. We show that the relation between key socio-health-economic and epidemiological parameters determines which of the several alternative outcomes may arise (unique and multiple stable equilibria, monotonic and fluctuating trajectories, chaotic dynamics, and path dependency). By comparing the deterministic dynamics with their stochastic counterpart, we also show that the deterministic approximation typically employed in economic epidemiology may lead to misleading conclusions about the true stochastic outcome because of the metastable properties of the stochastic system. Public policy, by affecting socio-health-economic parameters, may play a fundamental role in ruling out some undesired outcomes and promoting eradication.

The classic Lindahl allocation in a public good economy is both Pareto efficient and individually rational. However, it is easy to generate examples where the Lindahl outcome violates our intuition about economic justice. We explore how a suitable generalization of Lindahl taxation can lead to fair outcomes. We alter Lindahl's equilibrium approach so that consumers are given personalized price schedules for the public good (as opposed to simply personalized prices). The result is a special case of Mas-Colell and Silvestre's cost share equilibrium. We show that any outcome on the individually rational Pareto frontier can be achieved by some generalized Lindahl equilibrium. We next set up an optimization problem to search for a “just” Lindahl equilibrium. A social welfare function is first used to select an outcome on the individually rational Pareto frontier. We then provide an algorithm to construct the price functions that induce the precise generalized Lindahl equilibrium that obtains this outcome. Finally, we present a mechanism that Nash implements the set of generalized Lindahl equilibria for our environment.

We explore whether information on one's own social value orientation (SVO) impacts contributions in a public good game with leadership by example. In doing so, we compare the predictions of a model of belief-based preferences, where payoffs depend on first- and second-order beliefs on the contributions of others, and a model of internalized descriptive norms, where payoffs depend on deviation from an empirical norm. We argue that if pro-social behavior is driven by belief-based preferences, then private information on SVO should not impact contributions, but if the behavior is driven by internalized descriptive norms, then information on its own SVO should impact contributions. We report an experiment with three treatments: no information on SVO, binary information whether pro-self or pro-social, and SVO indicated on a scale from very pro-social to very pro-self. We observe no effect of information on contributions. This finding is inconsistent with internalized descriptive norms. We find that contributions are highest with a pro-social leader.

I examine the issue of implicit signaling of inexpressible types through delegation in a communication game with perfectly aligned preferences, two-sided private information, and communication frictions. A principal consults an agent to choose one of two actions. The principal has some tacit knowledge, which he cannot communicate, and may acquire some imperfect, costly signal about the state of the world. After observing the signal, the principal may choose to act or delegate to the agent, who observes the state of the world perfectly. Even if the principal's information acquisition and the signal are unobservable, the delegation, combined with private information, allows the agent to extract some information about the principal's tacit knowledge. I show that for a large class of parameters there exists an equilibrium, in which the agent (upon delegation) can correctly understand “cues” and tailor the action to the principal's needs. In particular, the agent's decision may be non-monotone in the state of the world.