We report experimental findings on the role of charitable promises in bargaining settings. We vary the enforceability of such promises within variants of ultimatum games where the proposer suggest a split between himself, the responder and a char-itable donation. By reneging on initial pledges,...

We use a laboratory experiment to identify the impact of risk in the private and public dimensions of social investments. In variants of a public good game, we separate the return a subject's investment generates for herself vs. the return to others. We find a detrimental effect of risk on...

In this paper we demonstrate how the impure public good model can be converted into a pure public good model with satiation of private consumption, which can be handled more easily, by using a variation of the aggregative game approach as devised by Cornes and Hartley (2007). We point out the...

In this paper we examine the potential of democratic constitutions for the provision of divisible public goods in a large economy. Our main insights are as follows: When aggregate shocks are absent, the combination of the following rules yields first-best allocations: a supermajority rule, equal...

Using the aggregative game approach as developed by Cornes and Hartley (2003, 2007) this paper analyzes the conditions under which matching mechanisms in a public good economy lead to interior matching equilibria in which all agents make strictly positive flat contributions to the public good....

Politicians may pander to public opinion and may renounce undertaking beneficial long-term projects. To alleviate this problem, we introduce a triple mechanism involving political information markets, reelection threshold contracts, and democratic elections. An information market is used to...

The paper examines the optimal combination of central bank independence and conservatism in the presence of uncertain central bank preferences. We develop a model of endogenous monetary policy delegation in which government chooses the central bank's degree of inde-pendence and conservatism so...

Matching mechanisms are regarded as an important instrument to bring about Pareto optimal allocations in a public good economy and to cure the underprovision problem associated with private provision of public goods. The desired Pareto optimal interior matching equilibrium, however, emerges only...

Recent international climate negotiations suggest that complete agreements are unlikely to materialize. Instead, partial cooperation between like-minded countries appears a more likely outcome. In this paper we analyze the effects of such partial cooperation between like-minded countries. In...