The government and a non-governmental organization (NGO) can invest in the provision of a public good. Who should be the owner of the public project? In an incomplete contracting model in which ex post negotiations are without frictions, the party that values the public good most should be the...

Without election or re-election motivations, what factors have impacted public goods preferences in an authoritarian country such as China? More specifically, what makes political elites be devoted to or not be devoted to local public goods provision? This study, using basic education provision...

This paper explores the nexus between the phenomenon of increasing income inequality and redistributive effects of the public sector. In an empirical analysis of seven OECD countries the redistributive effect will be examined by measuring the difference between inequality of market incomes and...

This paper analyzes the private provision of public goods where consumers interact within a fixed network structure and may benefit only from their direct neighbors' provisions. We present a proof for existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium with general best-reply functions. Our...

We develop and test a model of social comparison in which individuals gain status through pro-social behavior (competitive altruism) and in which they endogenously choose the reference group and associated reference standard involved in signaling status (reference group selection). In our...

Disentangling the motivational drivers of individuals is frequently regarded a key step in reconciling theory and empirical evidence on the voluntary provision of public goods. We present results of a large online field experiments with 12,624 contribution choices by members of the...

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...

This paper investigates differences between a default, a recommendation, and a mandatory minimum contribution on private provision of a large scale public good. Their interaction with regulator identity and intrinsic motivation on voluntary contributions is the primary focus. Data are from an...

How did eighteenth-century China manage to provide public goods nationwide despite its low tax rate? We construct a prefecture-level panel dataset from 1738 to 1820 and examine the effectiveness of the provision of public goods by the state granary system and elite services in mitigating price...

Policymakers interested in increasing private provision of public goods have been attempting to improve information availability, so as to enhance individuals' ability to make socially responsible choices. Nevertheless, individuals are often observed to contribute to public goods without knowing...