Transparency and accountability are often regarded as crucial for good governance and the efficient organization of public affairs. To systematically explore the impact of transparency and accountability on cooperation, we conduct a series of laboratory experiments on a variation of the public...

In this note I give a full characterization of all deterministic direct mechanisms in the public good provision problem with independent private values that are dominant strategy incentive compatible, ex-post individually rational, and ex-post budget balanced.

Consider a mechanism for the binary public good provision problem that is dominant strategy incentive compatible (DSIC), ex-post individually rational (EPIR), and ex-post budget balanced (EPBB). Suppose this mechanism has the additional property that the utility from participating in the...

We analyze a symmetric Bayesian game in which two players individually contribute to fund a discrete public good; contributions are refunded if they do not meet a threshold set by the seller of the good. We provide a general characterization of symmetric equilibrium strategies that are continuous...

We study adaptation to climate change in a federalist setting. To protect themselves against an increase in flood risk, regional governments choose among adaptation measures that vary with respect to their costs, the level of protection they offer, and the presence and nature of spillovers to...

We study the voluntary provision of a discrete public good via the contribution game. Players independently and simultaneously make nonrefundable contributions to fund a discrete public good, which is provided if and only if the contributions are at least as great as the cost of production. We...

We experimentally investigate the impact of visibility of contributors and cost of information on public good contributions. First, we vary recognizing all, highest or lowest contributors. Second, we investigate the effect of imposing a cost on viewing contributors. Recognizing all contributors...

We examine whether and how democratic procedures can achieve socially desirable public good provision in the presence of profound uncertainty about the benefits of public goods, i.e., when citizens are able to identify the distribution of benefits only if they aggregate their private...

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences, which leads to inefficiency. We analyze an exogenous linking...

This paper experimentally investigates trust and trustworthiness in a repeated and sequential three-player trust game with probabilistic returns and information asymmetry. It adds to the existing literature by combining experimental features from recent work in the trust game. We use random...