Abstract A growing body of literature has succeeded in explaining the economics of existing open source communities. However, the question why such communities come into existence has so far not been answered satisfactorily. This paper addresses this question with an evolutionary model: software...

A growing body of literature has succeeded in explaining the economics of existing open source communities. However, the question why such communities come into existence has so far not been answered satisfactorily. This paper addresses this question with an evolutionary model: software...

We study the long-run stochastic stability properties of volunteering strategies in finite populations. We allow for mixed strategies, characterized by the probability that a player may not volunteer. A pairwise comparison of evolutionary strategies shows that the strategy with a lower...

Providing public goods is hard, because providers are best off free-riding. Is it even harder if one group's public good is a public bad for another group or, conversely, gives the latter a windfall profit? We experimentally study public goods provision embedded in a social context and find that...

We study the effect of voting when insiders' public goods provision may affect passive outsiders. Without voting insiders' contributions do not differ, regardless of whether outsiders are positively or negatively affected or even unaffected. Voting on the recommended contribution level enhances...

This paper tests the hypothesis that a (partial) reason why cartels - collective but costly and non-binding price agreements - lead to higher prices in a Bertrand oligopoly could be because of a selection effect: decision-makers who are willing to form price agreements are more likely to be less...

This document, first created in 2007 and last updated in 2010, has now been superseded by the technical discussion in my 2010 article, Privatization, Free Riding, and Industry-Expanding Lobbying, in the International Review of Law and Economics and the plain-English discussion in my 2008...

In many markets, such as education, health care and public utilities, firms are often profit-constrained either due to regulation or because they have non-profit status. At the same time such firms might have altruistic concerns towards consumers. In this paper we study semi-altruistic firms’...