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...

This paper studies a game of strategic experimentation in which the players have access to two-armed bandits where the risky arm distributes lump-sum payoffs according to a Poisson process with unknown intensity. Because of free-riding, there is an inefficiently low level of experimentation in...

This paper studies a game of strategic experimentation with two-armed bandits whose risky arm might yield a payoff only after some exponentially distributed random time. Because of free-riding, there is an inefficiently low level of experimentation in any equilibrium where the players use...

In a public goods experiment, subjects can vary over a period of stochastic length two contribution levels: one is publicly observable (their cheap talk stated intention), while the other is not seen by the others (their secret intention). When the period suddenly stops, participants are...

We study the classical free-rider problem in public goods provision in a large economy with uncertainty about the average valuation of the public good. Individual preferences over public goods are shaped by a skill and a taste parameter. We use a mechanism design approach to solve for the...

We characterize revenue maximizing mechanisms in a common value environment where the value of the object is equal to the highest of bidders' independent signals. The optimal mechanism exhibits either neutral selection, wherein the object is randomly allocated at a price that all bidders are...

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 examine communication in a 2-player sequential public good game in which the leader has private information about the return from contributing to it. The leader decides first and the follower observes the leader's contribution, before deciding whether or not to contribute. Without...

For an incomplete-information model of public-good provision with interim participation constraints, we show that efficient outcomes can be approximated, with approximately full surplus extraction, when there are many agents and each agent is informationally small. The result holds even if...

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...