Decentralization of Pareto optima in economies with public projects,nonessential private goods and convex costs

Summary In the theory of economies with public goods one usually considers the case in which private goods are essential, i.e., each agent receives a fixed minimum level of utility if he consumes no private goods, irrespective of the public goods consumed. This paper develops the second welfare theorem for economies with public projects and possibly inessential private goods. As a corollary we also derive conditions under which valuation equilibria exist.hank Dolf Talman and an anonymous referee for many useful remarks and annotations of a previous draft of this paper.     

Supporting weakly Pareto optimal allocations in infinite dimensional nonconvex economies

In this paper, we prove a new version of the Second Welfare Theorem for economies with a finite number of agents and an infinite number of commodities, when the preference correspondences are not convex-valued and/or when the total production set is not convex. For this kind of nonconvex economies, a recent result, obtained by one of the authors, introduces conditions which, when applied to the convex case, give for Banach commodity spaces the well-known result of decentralization by continuous prices of Pareto-optimal allocations under an interiority condition. In this paper, in order to prove a different version of the Second Welfare Theorem, we reinforce the conditions on the commodity space, assumed here to be a Banach lattice, and introduce a nonconvex version of the properness assumptions on preferences and the total production set. Applied to the convex case, our result becomes the usual Second Welfare Theorem when properness assumptions replace the interiority condition. The proof uses a Hahn-Banach Theorem generalization by Borwein and Jofré (in Joper Res Appl Math 48:169–180, 1997) which allows to separate nonconvex sets in general Banach spacesThis work was partially supported by Nucleo Complex Engineering System. The successive versions of the paper were partly prepared during visits of Alejandro Jofré to CERMSEM and of Monique Florenzano and Pascal Gourdel to the Centro de Modelamiento Matematico. The hospitality of both institutions and the support of the french Coopération régionale Cone Sud are gratefully aknowledged. The authors thank Ali Khan for stimulating exchange of ideas and literature, Roko Aliprantis, Jean-Marc Bonnisseau, Alain Chateauneuf, Roger Guesnerie, Filipe Martins Da Rocha, Moncef Meddeb, B. Mordukovich, Lionel Thibault and Rabee Tourky for valuable discussions     

Strategy-proof allocation mechanisms for economies with public goods

We show that strategy-proof allocation mechanisms for economies with public goods are dictatorial—i.e., they always select an allocation in their range that maximizes the welfare of the same single individual (the dictator). Further, strategy-proof and efficient allocation mechanisms are strongly dictatorial—i.e., they select the dictator’s preferred allocation on the entire feasible set. Thus, our results reveal the extent to which the conflict between individual incentives and other properties that may be deemed desirable (e.g., fairness, equal treatment, distributive justice) pervades resource allocation problems.     

Behavioral explanations of efficient public good allocations

Theorists have studied decentralized allocation mechanisms by characterizing the Cournot-Nash equilibria of the mechanism. However, when a mechanism is operationalized by an iterative decision process, and agents derive utility only from the final outcome, Cournot behavior may not be an appropriate solution concept. We suggest two alternative behavioral models, reservation behavior and satisficing behavior, which recognize the impact of the iterative process upon incentives, yet maintain some of the critical simplifications that have made Cournot behavior an attractive model.We report on nine public good experiments with a Groves-Ledyard general equilibrium mechanism. Overall, the experiments attain highly efficient allocations, despite widespread violations of Cournot behavior. We suggest the explanation that most subjects initially followed reservation behavior, and then came to adopt satisficing behavior.     

Efficiency, monotonicity and rationality in public goods economies

Summary. In economies with public goods, we identify a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of cost monotonic, Pareto optimal and individually rational mechanisms. These exist if and only if the preferences of the agents satisfy what we call the equal ordering property. We also show that when this condition holds the egalitarian equivalent correspondence is the only cost monotonic selection from the core of the economy. Furthermore, it is unambiguous in the sense that the agents are indifferent among all the allocations in it. Received: February 26, 1996; revised version: January 31, 1997     

Fair allocations in large economies

The purpose of this paper is the study of problems of equity in an economy with many agents. Conditions are given under which every equitable and Pareto optimal allocation is a competitive equilibrium with equal incomes for all agents. The results are also of potential relevance for the literature on incentive compatibility since the allocations that are obained through incentive mechanisms in large economies turn out to be equitable.     

The optimistic stability of the core mapping in public goods production economies

Summary We show that in a production economy with public goods and a measure space of agents an allocation belongs to the core of the economy if and only if there exists no allocation in the core of a subeconomy that blocks it.We are indebted to Yossi Greenberg for very helpful suggestions, especially concerning the introduction of this work. We would also like to thank the referee for useful suggestions. Part of this work was done while the authors were visiting CORE, Université Catholique de Louvain. The support of CORE is gratefully acknowledged.     

On the consistency of conjectures with public goods

This note addresses Sugden's criticisms, levelled against our Non-Nash theory for public goods. In particular, we argue that our previous exercise was not to present a theory of public goods that could escape the voluntary contribution problem by relaxing Nash conjectures. Rather, our non-Nash model was merely an analytical exercise, meant to encompass a widevariety of behaviour. This note also indicates when positive conjectures might be realistic and, therefore, potentially consistent. Finally, we extend our specific example to include negative, zero, and positive conjectures.     

Price characterization of stable allocations in exchange economies with externalities

A pure exchange economy where the consumers have utility functions U_i(v₁(x₁),…, v_m(x_m)) for i = 1,…, m and where x_j is the consumption of consumer j, is studied. U_i may be nonincreasing or nondecreasing in v_j for j ≠ i. i is said to be nonbenevolent or nonmalevolent towards j, accordingly.An allocation is stable if no coalition can redistribute what it receives in the allocation to get an allocation which is preferred, given the consumptions of the consumers in the complementary coalition. Results concerning the relation among the Paretooptimal, stable and equilibrium allocations (under different definitions of equilibrium) are given. In particular, it turns out that in case every consumer is non-benevolent towards every other consumer, the classical results, concerning the relation between Paretooptimal allocations and equilibrium allocations, can be generalized in a satisfactory way.     

On the private provision of public goods

We consider a general model of the non-cooperative provision of a public good. Under very weak assumptions there will always exist a unique Nash equilibrium in our model. A small redistribution of wealth among the contributing consumers will not change the equilibrium amount of the public good. However, larger redistributions of wealth will change the set of contributors and thereby change the equilibrium provision of the public good. We are able to characterize the properties and the comparative statics of the equilibrium in a quite complete way and to analyze the extent to which government provision of a public good ‘crowds out’ private contributions.     

Competitive and core allocations in large economies with differential information

Summary. We study the core and competitive allocations in exchange economies with a continuum of traders and differential information. We show that if the economy is “irreducible”, then a competitive equilibrium, in the sense of Radner (1968, 1982), exists. Moreover, the set of competitive equilibrium allocations coincides with the “private core” (Yannelis, 1991). We also show that the “weak fine core” of an economy coincides with the set of competitive allocations of an associated symmetric information economy in which the traders information is the joint information of all the traders in the original economy. Received March 22, 2000; revised version: May 1, 2000     

Strategy-proof allocation mechanisms for pure public goods economies when preferences are monotonic

Summary. A fundamental problem in public finance is that of allocating a␣given budget to financing the provision of public goods (education, transportation, police, etc.). In this paper it is established that when␣admissible preferences are those representable by continuous and increasing utility functions, then strategy-proof allocation mechanisms whose (undominated) range contains three or more outcomes are dictatorial on the set of profiles of strictly increasing utility functions, a dense subset of the domain in the topologies commonly used in this context. If admissible utility functions are further restricted to be strictly increasing, or if mechanisms are required to be non-wasteful, then strategy-profness leads to (full) dictatorship. Received: August 14, 1995; revised version: September 25, 1997     

On the emergence of public education in land-rich economies

We analyze the emergence of large-scale education systems by modeling the incentives that the economic elite could have (collectively) to accept taxation destined to finance the education of credit-constrained workers. Contrary to previous work, in our model this incentive does not arise from a complementarity between physical and human capital in manufacturing. Instead, we emphasize the demand for human-capital-intensive services by high-income groups. Our model seems capable to account for salient features of the development of Latin America in the 19th century, where, in particular, land-rich countries such as Argentina established an extensive public education system and developed a sophisticated service sector before starting significant manufacturing activities.     

On Ramsey's conjecture: efficient allocations in the neoclassical growth model with private information

In his seminal paper of 1928, Ramsey conjectured that if agents discounted the future differently, in the long run all agents except the most patient would live at the subsistence level. The validity of this conjecture was investigated in different environments. In particular, it has been confirmed in the neoclassical growth model with dynamically complete markets. This paper studies this conjecture in a version of this model that includes private information and heterogeneous agents. A version of Bayesian implementation is introduced and a recursive formulation of the original allocation problem is established. Efficient allocations are renegotiation-proof and the expected utility of any agent cannot go to zero with positive probability if the economy does not collapse. If the economy collapses all agents will get zero consumption forever. Thus, including any degree of private information in the neoclassical growth model will deny Ramsey's conjecture, if efficient allocations are considered.     

论农村公共物品供给中的均衡

自农村改革以来,存在四种农田灌溉均衡:一是税费改革前,乡村组织以收取共同生产费的形式来组织农田灌溉的均衡;二是由村庄强人出面组织农户进行灌溉的均衡;三是既无乡村组织借重国家强制力,也无村庄强人借重私人暴力来抑制搭便车行为,从而形成的以微型水利灌溉为主的均衡;四是以村民小组或村为单位建立用水协会,组织农户灌溉的均衡。在当下中国,由于农民特殊的公正观,乡村组织退出农村公共物品供给领域后,农村很可能普遍出现第二或第三种均衡的糟糕局面。因此,农村公共物品供给,必须以国家强制力为保障,形成国家与村庄之间合作与互补的供给机制。