We investigate the impact of various audit schemes on the future provision of public goods, when contributing less than the average of the group is sanctioned exogenously and the probability of an audit is unknown. We study how individuals update their beliefs about the probability of being...

In this paper, we propose a definition of Edgeworth equilibrium for a private ownership production economy with (possibly infinitely) many private goods and a finite number of pure public goods. We show that Edgeworth equilibria exist whatever be the dimension of the private goods space, and can...

Unlike partial equilibrium analysis which study the equilibrium of a particular market under the clause "ceteris paribus" that revenues and prices on the other markets stay approximately unaffected, the ambition of a general equilibrium model is to analyze the simultaneous equilibrium in all...

This paper reports on experiments designed to compare the performance of two incentive mechanisms in public goods problems. One mechanism rewards and penalizes deviations from the average contribution of the other agents to the public good (tax-subsidy mechanism). Another mechanism allows agents...

This paper analyzes the effect of reputation on ownership of public goods in the Besley and Ghatak (2001) model. We show that in the dynamic setup the optimal ownership depends not only on the relative valuations for the public good but also on technology (elasticity of investment). We also show...

A vast recent literature has stressed social fragmentation's negative impact on the provision of public goods. This is a key issue, given that public goods availability has been reckoned as crucial to economic development, while developing countries' societies often exhibit high degrees of...

A vast recent literature has stressed social fragmentation's negative impact on the provision of public goods. It has been established theoretically that social fragmentation engenders discord and thereby undermines public goods provision. Empirical research has produced mixed results about this...