The Group Size Paradox Revisited
Abstract
Esteban and Ray (2001) model an increasing marginal cost of effort in providing a public good. If the marginal cost of contribution function has an elasticity greater than 1, then the level of provision is increasing in group size, regardless of the degree of rivalry of the public good. We modify their model to a standard public goods setting, where their results continue to hold. We then add small fixed costs of participation to the model. If the good is sufficiently rival, one of Olson's (1965) central propositions is restored: public goods will fail to be provided in large groups. Copyright � 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc..Download Info
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Bibliographic Info
Article provided by Association for Public Economic Theory in its journal Journal of Public Economic Theory.
Volume (Year): 10 (2008)
Issue (Month): 5 (October)
Pages: 785-799
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Citations
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.Cited by:
- Thierry Pénard & Sylvain Dejean & Raphaël Suire, 2011. "Olson’s Paradox Revisited: An Empirical Analysis of Incentives to Contribute in P2P File-sharing Communities," Economics Working Paper Archive (University of Rennes 1 & University of Caen) 201105, Center for Research in Economics and Management (CREM), University of Rennes 1, University of Caen and CNRS.
- Paul Pecorino & Akram Temimi, 2007. "Public good provision in a repeated game: The role of small fixed costs of participation," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 337-346, March.
- Martin Kolmar & Andreas Wagener, 2010. "Inefficient Group Organization as Optimal Adaption to Dominant Environments," CESifo Working Paper Series 3157, CESifo Group Munich.
- Paul Pecorino, 2009. "Public goods, group size, and the degree of rivalry," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 138(1), pages 161-169, January.
- Martin Kolmar & Hendrik Rommeswinkel, 2011. "Technological Determinants of the Group-Size Paradox," CESifo Working Paper Series 3362, CESifo Group Munich.
- Kaplan, Jonathan D. & Howitt, Richard E. & Kroll, Stephan, 2012. "Private Provision of a Stochastic Common Property Resource," 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington 124855, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
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