IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/pubfin/v9y1981i2p221-234.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Soliciting Accurate Evaluations of Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • A. H. Barnett

    (University of South Carolina)

Abstract

Among the many problems faced by policy makers in attempts to use public funds efficiently, none is more troublesome than that of inducing users of public goods to reveal their demand prices. The difficulty in attempts to solicit demand prices falls under the general rubric of the free-rider problem, and is manifest in the propensity of users to behave strategically when asked to reveal evaluations. Several preference revelation devices have been proposed to surmount this problem, but all of these schemes are seriously flawed. This article presents a device which overcomes some of the flaws contained in previous work. The preference revealing mechanism proposed here is a bidding mechanism which takes advantage of the commonly found trait of risk-aversion to discourage strategic revelations.

Suggested Citation

  • A. H. Barnett, 1981. "Soliciting Accurate Evaluations of Public Goods," Public Finance Review, , vol. 9(2), pages 221-234, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:9:y:1981:i:2:p:221-234
    DOI: 10.1177/109114218100900206
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/109114218100900206
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/109114218100900206?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Groves, Theodore & Ledyard, John O, 1977. "Optimal Allocation of Public Goods: A Solution to the "Free Rider" Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 783-809, May.
    2. Gordon Tullock, 1977. "Practical problems and practical solutions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 27-35, March.
    3. Tideman, T Nicolaus & Tullock, Gordon, 1976. "A New and Superior Process for Making Social Choices," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 84(6), pages 1145-1159, December.
    4. Theodore Groves & John Ledyard, 1977. "Some limitations of demand revelaing processes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 107-124, March.
    5. James Buchanan, 1973. "The institutional structure of externality," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 14(1), pages 69-82, March.
    6. J. H. Dreze & D. de la Vallee Poussin, 1971. "A Tâtonnement Process for Public Goods," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 38(2), pages 133-150.
    7. Barnett, Andy H & Yandle, Bruce, Jr, 1973. "Allocating Environmental Resources," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 28(1), pages 11-19.
    8. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    9. Peter Bohm, 1971. "An Approach to the Problem of Estimating Demand for Public Goods," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Peter Bohm & Allen V. Kneese (ed.), The Economics of Environment, pages 94-105, Palgrave Macmillan.
    10. Joseph Greenberg & Robert Mackay & Nicolaus Tideman, 1977. "Some limitations of the groves-ledyard optimal mechanism," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 129-137, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. JM Ford & DL Kaserman, 2000. "Suicide as an indicator of quality of life: evidence from dialysis patients," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 18(4), pages 440-448, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. A. Hamlin, 1984. "Constitutional control of processes and their outcomes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 133-145, January.
    2. Yang, Der-Yuan, 1997. "A Mechanism for Allocating the Expenses of Public Goods: Analyses of a Swedish Government Project," University of California at Santa Barbara, Economics Working Paper Series qt3mx5z1b4, Department of Economics, UC Santa Barbara.
    3. Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, 2017. "Quadratic voting and the public good: introduction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 1-22, July.
    4. Nicolaus Tideman & Florenz Plassmann, 2017. "Efficient collective decision-making, marginal cost pricing, and quadratic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 45-73, July.
    5. Kazuhiko Hashimoto & Hiroki Saitoh, 2010. "Domain expansion of the pivotal mechanism," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 34(3), pages 455-470, March.
    6. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    7. Matt Van Essen, 2013. "Making efficient public good decisions using an augmented Ausubel auction," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 1(1), pages 57-68, May.
    8. Csontos, László, 1997. "A politika tanulmányozása és a közgazdaságtan [The study of politics and political economy]," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(7), pages 557-568.
    9. Reischmann, Andreas, 2016. "Conditional Contribution Mechanisms for the Provision of Public Goods in Dynamic Settings - Theory and Experimental Evidence," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145613, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. John O. Ledyard & Thomas R. Palfrey, 1994. "Voting and Lottery Drafts as Efficient Public Goods Mechanisms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(2), pages 327-355.
    11. Charles Laine, 1985. "Distribution of jointly owned private goods by the demand-revealing process: Applications to divorce settlements and estate administration," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 47(3), pages 437-457, January.
    12. Martin Gaynor, 1989. "The presence of moral hazard in budget breaking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 61(3), pages 261-267, June.
    13. Jorge Martinez-Vazquez & Mark Rider, 1996. "A Revelation Approach To Optimal Taxation," Public Finance Review, , vol. 24(4), pages 439-463, October.
    14. Nicolaus Tideman & Florenz Plassmann, 2017. "Efficient bilateral taxation of externalities," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 109-130, October.
    15. Steven Johnson, 1984. "Demand-revealing processes and accounting standard-setting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 42(1), pages 3-24, January.
    16. Howard Margolis, 1983. "A note on demand-revealing," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 40(2), pages 217-225, January.
    17. Don Coursey & William Schulze, 1986. "The application of laboratory experimental economics to the contingent valuation of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 49(1), pages 47-68, January.
    18. Brueckner, Jan K. & Verhoef, Erik T., 2010. "Manipulable congestion tolls," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 315-321, May.
    19. Kalai, Ehud & Postlewaite, Andrew & Roberts, John, 1979. "A group incentive compatible mechanism yielding core allocations," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 20(1), pages 13-22, February.
    20. Deb, Rajat & Razzolini, Laura & Seo, Tae Kun, 2003. "Strategy-proof cost sharing, ability to pay and free provision of an indivisible public good," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 45(2), pages 205-227, April.

    More about this item

    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:sae:pubfin:v:9:y:1981:i:2:p:221-234. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.