Religious identity affects preferences and can consequently affect policy. We propose two mechanisms through which a ruler's religious identity can affect public good provision: i) greater provision of goods in regions where more subjects are the ruler's co-religionists, and ii) lower provision...

This paper explores the economics of electoral democracy, an almost entirely neglected subject. Running for office necessitates resources. But students of democracy have had almost nothing to say about how much money should be spent by candidates or where that money should come from. As a...

Walras defines the goods of public interest as those of whom the need is smelt in all its extent only by the community or the State. The article studies the coherence of this definition, its implications and its relationships with the definitions which the economists had given or give public...

Theeconomistisindeedinadifficultposition.Veryoftenheenters his profession motivated by a desire to in some way effect social reform, yet an intellectually honest and strict adherence to a wert- frei methodology often confines him to an ivory tower. The rigorous formulation and application of the...

According to literature,insecure land tenure biases against soilconservation on farmland. However, there islittle evidence to test whether farmers need toown their land to conserve it, or if long-termleases are adequate. One way to infer whetheror not different land tenure arrangementspromote...

In a simple public good economy, we propose a natural bar- gaining procedure, the equilibria of which converge to Lin- dahl allocations as the cost of bargaining vanishes. The pro- cedure splits the decision over the allocation in a decision about personalized prices and a decision about output...

This paper provides an explanation of the emergence of the standars textbook definition of public goods in the middle of the 20th century. It focuses on Richard Musgrave's contribution in defining public goods as non-rival and non-excludable - from 1939 to 1969. Although Samuelson's mathematical...

The stabilization of global climate presents one of the most complex problems in public good provision the world has faced. Continuation of ‘business as usual’ policies, leading to warming of more than 2 degrees over the next year, will produce significant damage to agricultural systems and...

This paper presents data from experiments with a linear voluntary contributions mechanism for public goods conducted in Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and the USA. The same experimental design was used in the four countries.

This paper studies public good provision in the laboratory using voluntary contribution mechanism, in a cross-cultural experiment conducted in the United States and Japan.