Unlike in developing countries, there tends to be no problem of access to water, electricity, and heating for private households in transition countries. However, transition countries have a considerable amount of low-income households, and the problem of affordability of these...

The objectives of this paper are to propose and to implement for the French case an approach for the estimation of consumers' willingness to pay for tap water quality. This method is indirect and is based on the observation of the households' demands for soft drinks and bottled water. The lack...

In addition to his role as a consumer pursuing his own interests, an individual may also regard himself as an ethical observer, judging matters from society's point of view. It is not clear which of these possibly conflicting roles respondents in contingent valuation studies take on. This leads...

The formation of peer groups with social norms for private contributions to a public good is analyzed in an n-player two stage game. First people choose a peer group, then they choose whether to contribute. The first choice is made through a learning process represented by evolutionary dynamics,...

In this paper, we present an economic model of moral motivation. Consumers prefer regarding themselves as socially responsible individuals. Voluntary contributions to public goods are motivated by this preference. The self-image as socially responsible is determined by a comparison of one's...

It is sometimes claimed that individuals' contributions to public goods are not motivated by economic costs and benefits alone, but that people also have a moral or norm-based motivation. A number of studies indicate that such moral or norm-based motivation might be crowded out, or crowded in,...

Several economists have maintained that social and internalized norms can enforce cooperation in public good situations. This experimental study investigates impacts of social and internalized norms for cooperation among strangers in a public good game. The experiment has two treatment effects....

Previous studies were plagued with considerable problems when interpreting and empirically analysing Wagner's Law. Therefore, we initially present some kind of "pure theory of government's share" for a two-person society based on the pure theory of public and private goods as originally...

We adopt the collective approach to consumer behavior with egoistic agents, and assume that the household consumption is either private or public. We then show that (i) household demands have to satisfy testable constraints and (ii) some elements of the decision process can be retrieved from...

We examine whether the Samuelsonian definition of public goods can be reconciled with "Wagner's Law", that is, public expenditures outpacing economic growth. While both predominantly focus on the demand-side, they differ with respect to their socio-political foundations. Taking the latter into...