We use a set of established growth models, which simultaneously include human capital and R&D, to show that the effect of mortality rate in human capital accumulation is quantitatively more important than the effect of perfectly guaranteed patents on research. First, we show that the effect of...

In a two-stage two-public good experiment, we study the effect that subjects’ possibility of contributing to a public good in the first stage of the game has on the voluntary contributions to the second public good. Our results show that subjects do not follow either the Nash strategy or the...

We run a public goods experiment with four different treatments. The payoff function is chosen such that the Nash equilibrium (NE) and the collective optimum (CO) are both in the interior of the strategy space. We test the effect of varying the level of the collective optimum on contributions....

The recent literature suggests that people have social preferences with a self-serving bias. Our data analysis reveals that the stylized fact of declining cooperation in repeated public goods experiments results from this bias and adaptation.

Charities publicize the donations they receive, generally according to dollar categories rather than the exact amount. Donors in turn tend to give the minimum amount necessary to get into a category. These facts suggest that donors have a taste for having their donations made public. This paper...

This paper surveys a selection of the literature on the private provision of public goods using the Kolm triangle. (The Kolm triangle is the analogue of an Edgeworth box in an economy with a public good.) We provide simple geometrical proofs of various established results using this graphical...

Current analysis addresses an apparently critical issue of wealth circulation in the society. We try to play a game with the welfare- related burden of taxation. Thus, the Negotiator No.1 stands up for citizens legal and moral rights to social services. The Negotiator No.2 proceeds from the...

Software is a potentially excludable public good. It is possible, at some cost, to exclude non-paying users from its consumption by using copyright law or technological restraints. Licensing the software under proprietary license terms makes of it a private good, licensing it under the BSD does...

We characterize the outcomes of games when players may make binding offers of strategy contingent side payments before the game is played. This does not always lead to efficient outcomes, despite complete information and costless contracting. The characterizations are illustrated in a series of...