Voluntary provision of a pure public good as the game of ‘chicken’

The voluntary exchange model, where the amount of a public good and contributions to its cost are simultaneously determined, is treated as a (2×2) non-cooperative non-constant-sum game. Three conceptually different types of games emerge. One of them is ‘Chicken’; each player can gain by pre-emptively threatening to pay nothing—unless the other player acts likewise. ‘Zero public goods’ is thus a possible outcome of voluntary exchange, even though it is Pareto inferior.     

When Does One Bad Apple Spoil the Barrel? An Evolutionary Analysis of Collective Action

This paper studies collective-action games in which the production of a public good requires teamwork. A leading example is a threshold game in which provision requires the voluntary participation of m out of n players. Quantal-response strategy revisions allow play to move between equilibria in which a team successfully provides, and an equilibrium in which the collective action fails. A full characterization of long-run play reveals the determinants of success; these include the correlation between players' costs of provision and their valuations for the good. The addition of an extra "bad apple" player can "spoil the barrel" by destabilizing successful teams and so offers a rationale for limiting the pool of possible contributors.     

On the voluntary provision of “weakest‐link” public goods: The case of private information

We characterize equilibria in a private‐provision public‐good game where individuals are allowed arbitrary contribution levels and the level of the public good equals the least contribution made by an individual. Equilibrium comparative statics are derived for the interim Pareto‐dominant equilibrium. First, improvements in the cost distribution of even only one player benefit all. Second, even with such “weakest‐link” public goods, for which greater similarity of preferences would seem to facilitate coordination, decreased heterogeneity can actually decrease payoffs. Indeed, increasing the riskiness of cost distributions has an ambiguous effect on welfare. Two mechanisms are provided for improving equilibrium payoffs: Technology transfer and cheap‐talk communication. While substantial welfare gains are possible, examples show that (a) technology transfer may be futile if a “regularity” condition is not satisfied and (b) cheap talk may be useless if the language for communication is not sufficiently rich.     

长沙市公立与民办高校人力资源成本比较研究

随着市场经济的不断发展,高校人力资源成本问题不仅关系到高校的发展,而且关系到整个国家和社会的发展。本文通过分析长沙市公立与民办高校人力资源成本现状,并进行实证研究,对公立和民办高校人力资源成本进行比较,得出公立高校人力资源成本的最主要影响因素为人力资源使用成本,而民办高校人力资源成本的最主要影响因素为人力资源保障成本和人力资源使用成本,公立和民办高校的人力资源成本构成不尽相同的结论。并从人力流动机制和人力资源成本角度提出了降低高校人力资源成本的政策建议。     

Can a raise in your wage make you worse off? A public goods perspective

We show that a seemingly paradoxical result is possible—an increase in one's wage can reduce one's welfare. Such outcome can occur in an economy populated by agents who value a private good bought using labor income and a public good produced by voluntary time contributions. A raise in the wage (in general, opportunity cost of time) makes each agent substitute away from contributing to the public good, failing to internalize the negative externality imposed on others. The result is a decrease in public good provision. Under quite general conditions, the implied cumulative negative effect on agents' welfare can more than offset the positive effect of the wage raise from increased private good consumption and lead to an equilibrium in which all agents are worse off. Our result is particularly relevant for developing economy settings as it holds for relatively low initial wage levels. We discuss the applicability of our findings to a number of important problems in development, such as market integration, cooperation in common pool resource conservation and social capital.     

Games played in a contracting environment

We analyze normal form games where a player has to pay a price to a supplier in order to play a specific action. Our focus is on supplier competition, arising from the fact that distinct suppliers supply different players, and possibly different actions of the same player. With private contracts, where a player only observes the prices quoted by his own suppliers, the set of equilibrium distributions over player actions coincides with the set of equilibrium distributions when all actions are supplied competitively, at cost. With public contracts, the two distributions differ dramatically even in simple games.     

Games played in a contracting environment

We analyze normal form games where a player has to pay a price to a supplier in order to play a specific action. Our focus is on supplier competition, arising from the fact that distinct suppliers supply different players, and possibly different actions of the same player. With private contracts, where a player only observes the prices quoted by his own suppliers, the set of equilibrium distributions over player actions coincides with the set of equilibrium distributions when all actions are supplied competitively, at cost. With public contracts, the two distributions differ dramatically even in simple games.     

公共资源节约管理任务实证研究——基于CPFL模型的地铁项目

提出了地铁工程的公共资源节约问题,设计了RCA模型,把地铁项目公共资源消耗问题的研究代换为对其全寿命周期成本LCC问题的研究;设计和使用CPFL模型建立LCC问题与功能缺陷之间的关联,实证获得地铁项目的建设活动性功能缺陷,指出克服这些缺陷是公共资源节约管理的任务.     

Ownership and Cost‐Sharing Contracts

We discuss the relative merits of public and private ownership in an incomplete contract framework developed by Hart, Shleifer and Vishney (HSV). We add two new elements to their model. First, the government may offer cost‐sharing contracts when procuring the good. Second, the owner of a private firm may divert resources that increase their own profit/utility but increase total costs. The cost sharing contract allows the government to reduce the private firm's incentives to dump quality in order to save on costs. However, this also leads to resource diversion, which increases total costs. We derive the preferred mode of ownership when the government optimally chooses the power of the cost sharing scheme. We find that the presence of quality‐reducing cost reductions only favours government ownership if the scope for resource diversion is substantial. A discussion of when resource diversion is likely to be important is also provided.     

RESOURCE CURSE,POLITICAL ENTRY,AND DEADWEIGHT COSTS

A simple model of political entry in a two‐sector economy is developed to analyze the effects of natural resource wealth on economic policy, political development, and civil insurrection. The model emphasizes the role of political entry and deadweight costs of taxation on the joint determination of these economic and political outcomes. Contrary to popular belief, my model shows that natural resource abundance is an economic blessing even in a rent‐seeking society, although resource dependence can be negatively associated with economic performance. In a contested political market, dictators care about popular support and hence resource wealth can help reduce the deadweight cost of taxation (and hence the cost of public good provision). On the other hand, natural resource wealth can be a political curse, because it encourages political entry and hence it induces incumbent dictators to run more repressive regimes. With constant returns counterinsurgent technology, however, the equilibrium number of insurgents is independent of the size of resource wealth. The onset of civil war, therefore, depends on the counterinsurgent technology and whether the costs of entry deterrence are affected by resource wealth. This helps clarify the two seemingly contradictory hypotheses that “resource wealth enhances regime durability” and “resource wealth fuels conflict.”     

Providing public goods in the absence of strong institutions

This paper proposes a simple two-stage mechanism to establish positive contributions to public goods in the absence of powerful institutions to provide the public good and to sanction free-riders. In this mechanism players commit to the public good by paying a deposit prior to the contribution stage. If there is universal commitment, deposits are immediately refunded whenever a player contributes her specified share to the public good. If there is no universal commitment, all deposits are refunded and the standard game is played. For suitable deposits, prior commitment and full ex post contributions are supported as a subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium for the resulting game. As the mechanism obviates the need for any ex post prosecution of free-riders, it is particularly suited for situations where players do not submit to a common authority as in the case of international agreements.     

Committee Design with Endogenous Information

Identical agents gather costly information, and then aggregate it through voting. Because information is a public good, information is underprovided relative to the social optimum. A "good" voting rule must give incentives to acquire information, as well as aggregate information efficiently. A voting rule that requires a large plurality (in the extreme, unanimity) to upset the status quo can be optimal only if the information available to each agent is sufficiently accurate. This result is independent of the preferences of voters and of the cost of information.     

Public Good Mix in a Federation with Incomplete Information

We analyze a model of resource allocation in a federal system in which the center transfers real resources between member states. The center is assumed to be unable to observe the precise value of the cost differences across jurisdictions that motivate the transfers. Moreover, the center cannot observe the output levels of the individual local public goods provided by the jurisdictions, but must condition its transfers on a coarse aggregate of expenditures on public goods. We find that when the jurisdiction with private information realizes a high unit cost, it is generally worthwhile for the center to allow it a level of expenditure on public goods that differs from the "first best" level. However, whether that level is higher or lower than its first best level depends on the magnitudes of demand parameters for the local public good.     

A Characterization for Dominant Strategy Implementation

We introduce a perfect price discriminating mechanism for allocation problems with private information. A perfect price discriminating mechanism treats a seller, for example, as a perfect price discriminating monopolist who faces a price schedule that does not depend on her report. In any perfect price discriminating mechanism, every player has a dominant strategy to truthfully report her private information.We establish a characterization for dominant strategy implementation: Any outcome that can be dominant strategy implemented can also be dominant strategy implemented using a perfect price discriminating mechanism. We apply this characterization to derive the optimal, budget-balanced, dominant strategy mechanisms for public good provision and bilateral bargaining.     

What if women earned more than their spouses? An experimental investigation of work-division in couples

Female specialization on household work and male specialization on labor-market work is a widely observed phenomenon across time and countries. This absence of gender neutrality with respect to work-division is known as the “work-division puzzle”. Gender differences regarding characteristics (preferences, productivity) and context (wage rates, social norms) are generally recognized as competing explanations for this fact. We experimentally control for context and productivity to investigate preferences for work-division by true co-habiting couples, in a newly developed specialization task. Efficiency in this task comes at the cost of inequality, giving higher earnings to the “advantaged” player. We compare behavior when men (or women) are in the advantaged position, which corresponds to the traditional (or power) couple case where he (or she) earns more. Women and men contribute equally to the household public good in all conditions. This result allows us to rule out some of the standard explanations of the work-division puzzle.     

INTIMIDATION: LINKING NEGOTIATION AND CONFLICT

A challenger wants a resource initially held by a defender, who can negotiate a settlement by offering to share the resource. If Challenger rejects, conflict ensues. During conflict, each player could be a tough type for whom fighting is costless. Therefore, nonconcession intimidates the opponent into conceding. Unlike in models where negotiations happen in the shadow of exogenously specified conflicts, offers made during negotiations determine how conflict unfolds if negotiations fail. In turn, how conflict is expected to unfold determines the players' negotiating positions. In equilibrium, negotiations always fail with positive probability, even if players face a high cost of conflict. Allowing multiple offers leads to brinkmanship—the only acceptable offer is the one made when conflict is imminent. If negotiations fail, conflict is prolonged and not duration dependent.     

Heterogeneity, returns to scale, and collective action

Abstract .  I analyze the effects of resource inequality and valuation heterogeneity on the provision of public goods with increasing or decreasing returns to scale in production. The existing literature typically takes the agents' characteristics as given and known to the researcher. In contrast, this paper compares collective action provision across groups of agents with resources and valuations for the public good drawn from different known joint distributions. Specifically, I characterize the expected equilibrium public good level as function of various distributional properties and moments. A resource-valuation distribution that first-order stochastically dominates another distribution always results in higher expected public good provision level, independent of the production technology. With decreasing returns to scale in the public good production, higher resource inequality results in higher expected provision. With increasing returns the same result holds when the mean resource level is relatively low, but expected provision decreases in inequality when the mean resource level is high. A parallel result holds for agents' valuations.     

Marginal Subsidies in Tullock Contests

In a general Tullock contest, we examine a situation where a limited resource can be used to provide marginal subsidies to either player (weak or strong), or to increase the prize directly. We show that to maximize total effort, subsidizing the weak/strong player is preferred when the contest is sufficiently accurate/inaccurate. This result generalizes to n‐player lottery contests. In a lottery contest (Tullock contest with ), we derive the optimal scheme for a full range of resource: when the resource is small, it is optimal to only subsidize the weak player; when it is large, both players should be subsidized simultaneously.     

Inefficient Public Provision in a Repeated Elections Model

We consider a dynamic setting with no policy commitment. Two parties that compete for election must choose the level of provision of a public good as well as the tax payment needed to finance it. The cost of producing the good may be high or low and this information is not known to the voters. We show that there exists an equilibrium in which the party that does not want much of the public good uses the inefficient (high cost) technology even though the efficient one is available. Using the low cost technology would, by informing the voters about the cost parameter, force it to produce an excessively high level of the good in the future. Interestingly, this equilibrium is not symmetric, suggesting that a party with a strong taste for the public good is less likely to adopt a wasteful policy.