Kantian Imperatives in Public Goods Networks

We study a networked society where public good provision and access are both local and where selfish agents co-habit with others who follow Kantian imperatives. We find that the locations of the Kantians in the network play a nuanced role in determining aggregate free-riding and material welfare. Ideal distributions of these two behavioral types over the network, an NP-hard problem, are either ones that benefit from Kantian homophily (a behaviorally segregated society) or from Kantian influence on actions of the selfish agents across the network (a behaviorally heterophilous society). We utilize this property to study the network source for the difference between free-riding and welfare in the presence of two behaviorally opposing but socially connected agents. We find that moral homophily is good for reducing aggregate free-riding, though it can hurt aggregate welfare