Equilibrium allocations of endowment-pretension games in public good economies

In a public good economy where agents' preferences are known but endowments are private information, instituting an allocation rule and asking the agents their initial endowments induces an endowment-pretension game. We analyse the Nash equilibrium allocations of this game and discuss its welfare properties with reference to voluntary contributions allocations. Received: 30 May 2001, Accepted: 23 September 2005 JEL Classification: H41 I am grateful to Murat Sertel for his continuous support and encouragement; to G?ksel Asan and Arunava Sen for their invaluable help. I would also like to thank Fikret Adaman, Ahmet Alkan, Salvador Barberá, Semih Koray, Andrei Ratiu, Muhamet Yíldíz, ünal Zenginobuz, an Associate Editor and two referees of the Review of Economic Design for their enlightening comments on previous drafts. Earlier versions of this paper were written during my stay at Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona and at the Indian Statistical Institute. Both visits have been possible by the kindness of the host institutions and the financial support of the Turkish Academy of Sciences and Serem Ltd. It is a pleasure for me to express my gratitude to all these institutions. Of course, all possible errors are mine.     

Fundamental impossibility theorems on voluntary participation in the provision of non-excludable public goods

Groves and Ledyard (Econometrica 45:783–809, 1977) constructed a mechanism attaining Pareto efficient allocations in the presence of public goods. After this path-breaking paper, many mechanisms have been proposed to attain desirable allocations with public goods. Thus, economists have thought that the free-rider problem is solved, in theory. Our view to this problem is not so optimistic. Rather, we propose fundamental impossibility theorems with public goods. In the previous mechanism design, it was implicitly assumed that every agent must participate in the mechanism that the designer provides. This approach neglects one of the basic features of public goods: non-excludability. We explicitly incorporate non-excludability and then show that it is impossible to construct a mechanism in which every agent has an incentive to participate.     

To sell public or private goods

Review of Economic Design - Traditional analysis takes the public or private nature of goods as given. However, technological advances, particularly related to digital goods such as non-fungible...     

Central government subsidies to local public goods

We examine the welfare effects of a central government's subsidy for a local public good in a Nash equilibrium model with two types of public goods. We first show that the welfare effect depends on the substitution and evaluation effects. We also investigate the optimal subsidy rate in a second-best framework and explore how the optimal subsidy scheme depends on the relative evaluation of the two types of public goods. Received: August 20, 1998/accepted: February 12, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" We are grateful to John Quigley, Minoru Kunisaki, Tom Panella, Andy Haughwout, Steven Craig, William Hoyt, Michael Ash, Konrad Stahl, Amihai Glazer, David Wildasin and two referees for helpful comments and suggestions, An early version of this paper was presented at a seminar at University of California, Berkeley and at conferences at JAEE Annual Meeting in Japan, North American Meetings of The RSAI in Washington, WSAI conference in Hawaii, Public Choice Meeting in San Francisco.     

Local public goods and average cost pricing

Existence of a compensated Tiebout equilibrium is proved for an economy with a measure space of consumers. This result is then extended to show the existence of equilibrium for an economy with natural monopolies and contestable markets.     

公众参与中的若干问题

公众参与就是在社会分层、公众需求多样化、利益集团介入的情况下采取的一种协调对策 ,它强调公众 (市民 )对城市规划编制、管理过程的参与、决策和管理。九十年代以来 ,公众参与被引入我国城市规划学界 ,城市规划“公众参与”的呼声也越来越高。随着“以人为本”、“福利经济”、“民主参与”等现代规划理念逐步融入我国城市规划体系 ,对公众参与的理解也基本上形成了一个共识 ,那就是公众参与是人本主义与民主化的体现。我国正处在逐步市场化、民主化的建设过程中 ,公众参与的发展也处在初级阶段 ,因此在实践与研究的过程中还有很多问题需…     

Voluntary contributions and local public goods in a federation

This paper considers nonneutral effects of government spending in a federation of multiple jurisdictions. Both government spending and private donations finance local public goods, redistributive programs, that provide transfers for the poor. In the standard model, government spending has no effect on the public goods, as donors reduce their donations one for one in response to an increase in government spending. In a federation, donors of a jurisdiction donate, through federal charities, to help the poor in the jurisdiction and the poor in other jurisdictions as well. Jurisdictions are thus linked through donations. Such linkage influences donors' behavior beyond the traditional crowding-out effect. As a result, government spending has nonneutral effects on the level of public goods.     

Effects of an anticipated expansion in international public goods on public capital accumulation

This paper presents a generic model to include public capital accumulation and the services of international public goods provided by a neighbor country. It examines the long-run and short-run responses of private and public capital accumulation in the home country to an anticipated increase in international public goods. It is found that the home economy in effect cuts its public capital stock, but keeps an unchanged private capital stock in the long run when a neighbor commits itself to expanding the stock of public goods in the future. The key factor determining the short-run responses of the home country is the extent to which it will match its government spending with a neighbor country's policy, which is associated with the relative difference between the marginal utility of consumption and that of home public capital affected by an increase in international public goods.     

Efficient provision of public goods with endogenous redistribution

We study a balanced mechanism that is capable of implementing in Nash equilibrium all the Pareto-efficient individually rational allocations for an economy with public goods. The Government chooses a set of weights directly related to the Lindahl prices corresponding to the Pareto-efficient allocation to be implemented. The mechanism then guarantees that initial endowments are re-allocated so that the chosen vector of Lindahl prices is indeed a Lindahl equilibrium, and implements the corresponding Lindahl allocation. Finally, besides being balanced, our mechanism is simple. Each agent has to declare a desired increase in the amount of public good, and a vector of redistributive transfers of initial endowments (across other agents).Received: 9 May 2003, Accepted: 22 October 2003, JEL Classification: C79, H21, H30, H41We wish to thank Jeremy Edwards, Andrew Postlewaite and Emanuela Sciubba for helpful comments. Of course, any remaining errors are our own.     

城市规划民主与公众参与

在民主政治的基础上,公众参与既是民主政治的通俗化表达、一种权力制度,又是一种具体的社会民主形式.具体到城市规划领域,公众参与既作为一种权力制度,以一种抽象的规划权力运行机制存在,又作为具象的城市规划民主的实现形式而出现;在此意义上,城市规划民主与公众参与是一致的.公众参与只有在城市规划民主的基础上才具有实质意义.     

Stackelberg leadership and transfers in private provision of public goods

We consider transfers in a Stackelberg game of private provision of a public good. It turns out that the agent who is the follower in the process of making voluntary contributions to a public good may have an incentive to make monetary transfers to the Stackelberg leader even in a situation where neither has a comparative advantage in making contributions to the public good. The Stackelberg leader is willing to accept such transfers if the actual contribution game is fully non-cooperative because the transfer generates a Pareto superior outcome. If the contributions in the Stackelberg equilibrium is the threat point of a possible cooperative Nash bargaining game, the Stackelberg leader will refuse to accept the transfer if she can. Received: 30 June 1995 / Accepted: 18 February 1997     

Taxation in an economy with private provision of public goods

This paper analyses the effects of taxation and subsidies in an economy with private provision of a public good. It is shown that in a situation where all individuals contribute, taxation affects the equilibrium allocation if and only if at least one individual's voluntary contribution to the public good has an impact on the aggregate tax payments of the others. We then consider linear nonneutral tax-subsidy schemes and analyse efficiency and uniqueness of the resulting Nash equilibria. We show that an efficient Nash equilibrium, where all individuals contribute, will in general not be unique, and establish a non-uniformity property which a tax-subsidy scheme must fulfil in order to induce a unique interior equilibrium that is efficient. Throughout the paper it is assumed that individuals fully understand and take into account the government's budget constraint. Received: 3 November 1997 / Accepted: 23 March 1999     

Three public goods and lexicographic preferences: replacement principle

Review of Economic Design - We study the problem of locating multiple public goods for a group of agents with single-peaked preferences over an interval. An alternative specifies for each public...     

论我国城市规划的公众参与

以西方国家城市规划的公众参与理论发展与实践活动为背景,就我国城市规划公众参与的现状与问题,对公众参与的法的依据与保障、公众参与主体、公众参与的社会化功效、公众参与模式等方面进行了分析与探讨.     

Voice,exit and local capture in public provision of private goods

We developed a simple model on publicly provided private goods, such as health or education that highlights a vicious cycle faced by many developing countries. When public services are not of high quality due to mismanagement or corruption, the wealthy may switch to private alternatives. Their exit weakens the influence of citizen voice over politicians, since that leaves the poor as the only constituent with a stake in good governance. As the civic control over local governments weakens, government’s concern for social welfare declines even further, leading to more corruption and more corrosion in the quality of public services. Our model shows that establishing institutions (such as local taxation) that spread the costs and benefits of governance across the whole society is crucial for the success of local governments. Empirical results from the Philippines support this hypothesis.     

城市公共产品供给决策中的公众参与

实现城市公共产品的有效供给,为城市发展提供良好的基础条件,是提升城市综合发展能力的关键所在。由于缺乏系统完善的公众参与机制,在城市公共产品供给决策领域,存在着公众参与层次较低、公众参与失灵等问题。城市公共产品供给决策中公众参与的作用能否得到实现,离不开公众参与子机制作用的有效发挥。实现城市公共产品供给决策过程和实现过程与公众参与的系统整合,以此构建城市公共产品供给决策中公众参与机制的运作模型。     

The effect of spillovers on the provision of local public goods

This paper analyzes the provision of local public goods with positive spillovers across jurisdictions. If spillovers are symmetric, the non-cooperative game played by jurisdictions admits a unique equilibrium, and an increase in spillovers reduces the total provision of public goods. Smaller jurisdictions always reduce their contribution, but larger jurisdictions can increase their contribution. When spillovers are asymmetric, equilibrium is unique if spillovers are low, while multiple equilibria exist for high spillover values. In the case of two jurisdictions, an increase in the flow of spillovers to one jurisdiction benefits agents from that jurisdiction but harms agents in the other jurisdiction. Beyond the case of two jurisdictions, the effect of changes in spillovers cannot be signed. An increase in the spillovers flowing to a jurisdiction can actually result in an increase in the supply of public goods by that jurisdiction and harm agents residing in it, while benefiting agents in the other jurisdictions. The results of the paper reveal the complexity of interactions that will plague the design of institutions for multijurisdictional local public good economies with spillovers.      

Voluntary contributions to multiple public goods in a production economy with widespread externalities

In a production economy, multiple public goods are produced by firms in competitive markets, and provided by the government together with contributions from consumers. There are widespread externalities: all consumers’ consumption and contributions and all firms’ production enter into utility functions. Public goods can be imperfect substitutes or complements, and they can be local public goods or club goods. Zero bounds that require consumers to make nonnegative contributions complicate the differentiable approach. Applying the transversality theorem for smooth economies in a regular parameterization, we obtain the existence of equilibrium in such an economy, and generically equilibria are regular and locally unique.     

Carrots and sticks: new evidence in public goods games with heterogeneous groups

Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination - Standard public goods games often assign group members the same marginal per capita returns to public goods production, but in reality group...