IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/recosp/reco_pr3_0087.html

Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods?

Author

Listed:
  • Béatrice Boulu-Reshef
  • Samuel H. Brott
  • Adam Zylbersztejn

Abstract

We study a finitely repeated public goods game (based on the voluntary contribution mechanism) played under complete uncertainty about the marginal benefit of the public good relative to the private consumption (commonly known as the marginal per capita return): neither one?s marginal per capita return nor other players? marginal per capita returns are known at the time of decision-making. We show that contributions are equivalent when the rate of return is predetermined and when it is uncertain, and display a similar decay over time. Combined with the previous experimental findings, our results suggest that cooperation in public goods games is sensitive to the source of uncertainty about marginal per capita return. JEL Codes: H41, D81, C91, C92.

Suggested Citation

  • Béatrice Boulu-Reshef & Samuel H. Brott & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2017. "Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods?," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 68(5), pages 785-791.
    • Handle: RePEc:cai:recosp:reco_pr3_0087
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=RECO_PR3_0087
    Download Restriction: free
    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-economique-2017-5-page-785.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Billur Aksoy & Silvana Krasteva, 2020. "When does less information translate into more giving to public goods?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(4), pages 1148-1177, December.
    2. Caleb A. Cox & Brock Stoddard, 2021. "Common-Value Public Goods and Informational Social Dilemmas," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 343-369, May.
    3. Luigi Butera & John List, 2017. "An Economic Approach to Alleviate the Crisis of Confidence in Science: With an Application to the Public Goods Game," Artefactual Field Experiments 00608, The Field Experiments Website.
    4. Véronique Flambard & Fabrice Le Lec & Rustam Romaniuc, 2024. "An experimental comparison of contributions in collective prevention games and public goods games," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 62(4), pages 1598-1617, October.
    5. Vincent Théroude & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2017. "Cooperation in a risky world," Working Papers halshs-01443917, HAL.
    6. Banerjee, Anwesha, 2024. "The effect of heterogeneity and risk on co-operation: Experimental evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    7. Dorner, Zack & Tucker, Steven & Hassan, Gazi M, 2024. "Heterogeneous productivity stabilizes public good contributions under certainty, uncertainty and ambiguity," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 110(C).
    8. Annarita Colasante & Aurora García-Gallego & Nikolaos Georgantzis & Andrea Morone, 2020. "Voluntary contributions in a system with uncertain returns: a case of systemic risk," Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, Springer;Society for Economic Science with Heterogeneous Interacting Agents, vol. 15(1), pages 111-132, January.
    9. Vincent Théroude & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2017. "Cooperation in a risky world," Working Papers 1704, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Etienne (GATE Lyon St-Etienne), Université de Lyon.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:recosp:reco_pr3_0087. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-economique.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.