Most of the literature on government intervention in models of voluntary public goods supply focuses on interventions that increase the total level of a public good, which is considered to be typically underprovided. However, an intervention that is successful in increasing the public good level...

This paper analyzes the effects of an income splitting system on marriage partners. The focus is on the time allocation, on investment in marriage-specific human capital and on the distribution of income within the family. Two insights are discussed in detail. First, the distribution of...

In a public good economy the distribution of initial income is an important determinant of how many individuals contribute to the public good. For the case when all individuals have identical preferences in this paper a simple formula is derived that describes the proportion of all income...

Using the traditional model of voluntary public good provision, it is shown that an expansion of group size exacerbates free riding tendencies as long as private consumption and the public good are strictly normal and weak gross substitutes. This result generalizes a previous Cobb-Douglas...

Many public goods like dams, fire departments, and lighthouses do not provide direct utility but act more as insurance devices against floods, fire, and shipwreck. They either diminish the probability or the size of the loss. We extend the public good model with this insurance aspect and...

This paper explores the capability of the state to affect the individual's decision to work for free. For this purpose we combine individual-level data from the European and World Values Survey with macroeconomic and political variables for OECD member countries. Empirically we identify three...

We consider a sequential game in which one player produces a public good and the other player can influence this decision by making an unconditional transfer. An efficient allocation requires the Lindahl property: the sum of the two (implicit) individual prices has to be equal to the resource...

This paper uses a survey-based approach to test alternative methods of channeling tax relief to donors - as a tax rebate for the donor or as a matched payment to the receiving charity. On accounting grounds these two are equivalent but, in line with earlier experimental studies, we find that...

Along with the rise in income inequality in the U.S., we have observed a simultaneous move toward fiscal devolution and increased government reliance on private provision of public goods. This paper argues that these phenomena are related. We describe a model of jurisdiction and policy formation...

For several years, an increasing number of firms are investing in Open Source Software (OSS). While improvements in such a non- excludable public good cannot be appropriated, companies can benefit indirectly in a complementary proprietary segment. We study this incentive for investment in OSS....