We study the determinants of the (steady-state) POUM effect in a model where the individuals evaluate their expected future income using both their current income and observable characteristics such as education, race or gender.

This paper examines how a religious festival (Ramadan) and the degree of religiosity affect cooperation and costly punishment in a public goods experiment. We find significantly higher cooperation levels outside the festival among less religious people. This behavior is consistent with a...

In this paper we analyze how biased lotteries can be used to overcome the free-riding problem in voluntary public good provision. We characterize the optimal combinations of bias and lottery prize and the conditions that guarantee efficient public good provision in equilibrium.

We study the assignment of agents to clubs in a frictional market environment. Club entry is endogenous and clubs compete by posting reserve prices in a competing auctions game prior to the agents’ decisions regarding which club to visit. The competing auctions equilibrium is constrained...

The restart effect occurs in linear voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM) experiments when there is an upward pulse in contributions to the group account following a stoppage and then restarting of the VCM experiment. Although the restart effect is a well-known empirical regularity little...

We report the results of experiments designed to investigate the effects of random public revelation of individual choices on voluntary contributions to a public good. Varying the number of subjects whose contributions are made public, we find that public revelation always leads to higher...

I examine two dimensions of framing in public goods games: Contributing vs. Taking and Gains vs. Losses. I find decreased cooperation under the Taking frame, but not under the Loss frame. This framing effect is stronger for men than women.

We characterize the second-best public-goods provision rule with an inequality-averse principal. Our main results show how the provision rule reacts to variations of an exogenous budget available for public-goods provision when the principal exhibits different levels of inequality aversion.

We introduce location choice for the public good in the property rights framework. We find that it can be optimal to separate location from ownership.

In an economy with voluntarily provided public goods and private product varieties, and a general class of CES preferences, it is shown that aggregate public good contribution follows an inverted-U pattern with respect to group size when private and public goods are substitutable in preferences....