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Utilitarian mechanism design for an excludable public good

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  • Martin F. Hellwig

    (Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods)

Abstract

This paper studies the design of optimal utilitarian mechanisms for an excludable public good. Excludability provides a basis for making people pay for admissions; the payments can be used for redistribution and/or funding. Whereas previous work assumed that admissions are governed by the payment or nonpayment of a price, this paper allows for arbitrary admission rules. With sufficient inequality aversion, nondegenerate randomization in admissions is shown to be desirable for certain model specifications, with and without participation constraints. The paper also gives a sufficient condition on the distribution of preferences under which randomization is undesirable.

Suggested Citation

  • Martin F. Hellwig, 2010. "Utilitarian mechanism design for an excludable public good," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 44(3), pages 361-397, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:44:y:2010:i:3:d:10.1007_s00199-009-0488-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-009-0488-3
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    Cited by:

    1. Martin F. Hellwig, 2010. "Utilitarian mechanism design for an excludable public good," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 44(3), pages 361-397, September.
    2. Loertscher, Simon & Marx, Leslie M., 2017. "Club good intermediaries," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 430-459.
    3. Traxler, Christian, 2012. "Majority voting and the welfare implications of tax avoidance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 1-9.
    4. Khan, M. Ali & Qiao, Lei & Rath, Kali P. & Sun, Yeneng, 2020. "Modeling large societies: Why countable additivity is necessary," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Utilitarian welfare maximization; Admission rules for excludable public goods; Randomization in optimal mechanisms;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H21 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue - - - Efficiency; Optimal Taxation
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

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