IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ces/ceswps/_3419.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Volunteering and the Strategic Value of Ignorance

Author

Listed:
  • Florian Morath

Abstract

Private provision of public goods often takes place as a war of attrition: individuals wait until someone else volunteers and provides the good. After a certain time period, however, one individual may be randomly selected. If the individuals are uncertain about their cost of provision, but can find out about this cost ahead of the volunteering game, a strategic value is attached to the information, and individuals may prefer not to learn their cost of provision. If the time horizon is sufficiently short, in equilibrium only one individual may acquire information about his cost. For a long time horizon, acquiring information is strictly dominant. The time limit is an important instrument in influencing the efficiency of the volunteering game.

Suggested Citation

  • Florian Morath, 2011. "Volunteering and the Strategic Value of Ignorance," CESifo Working Paper Series 3419, CESifo.
    • Handle: RePEc:ces:ceswps:_3419
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp3419.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David P. Myatt, 2005. "Instant Exit from the Asymmetric War of Attrition," Economics Series Working Papers 160, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Bilodeau, Marc & Slivinski, Al, 1996. "Toilet cleaning and department chairing: Volunteering a public service," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 299-308, February.
    3. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole, 1991. "Game Theory," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061414, December.
    4. Che, Yeon-Koo & Gale, Ian L, 1998. "Caps on Political Lobbying," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(3), pages 643-651, June.
    5. Morath, Florian, 2010. "Strategic information acquisition and the mitigation of global warming," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(2), pages 206-217, March.
    6. Kennan, John & Wilson, Robert, 1990. "Can Strategic Bargaining Models Explain Collective Bargaining Data?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(2), pages 405-409, May.
    7. Dan Kovenock & Michael R. Baye & Casper G. de Vries, 1996. "The all-pay auction with complete information (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 291-305.
    8. Florian Morath & Johannes Münster, 2013. "Information acquisition in conflicts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(1), pages 99-129, September.
    9. Amann, Erwin & Leininger, Wolfgang, 1996. "Asymmetric All-Pay Auctions with Incomplete Information: The Two-Player Case," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 1-18, May.
    10. Paul Klemperer & Jeremy Bulow, 1999. "The Generalized War of Attrition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 175-189, March.
    11. Hernando-Veciana, Ángel & Tröge, Michael, 2011. "The insider's curse," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 339-350, March.
    12. Hernando-Veciana, Ángel, 2009. "Information acquisition in auctions: Sealed bids vs. open bids," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 372-405, March.
    13. Kennan, John & Wilson, Robert, 1989. "Strategic Bargaining Models and Interpretation of Strike Data," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 4(S), pages 87-130, Supplemen.
    14. Bliss, Christopher & Nalebuff, Barry, 1984. "Dragon-slaying and ballroom dancing: The private supply of a public good," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 25(1-2), pages 1-12, November.
    15. Hendricks, Ken & Weiss, Andrew & Wilson, Charles A, 1988. "The War of Attrition in Continuous Time with Complete Information," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 29(4), pages 663-680, November.
    16. Pankaj Ghemawat & Barry Nalebuff, 1990. "The Devolution of Declining Industries," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 105(1), pages 167-186.
    17. Peter Howitt & Elisabetta de Antoni & Axel Leijonhufvud (ed.), 1999. "Money, Markets and Method," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 1559.
    18. Sahuguet, Nicolas, 2006. "Volunteering for heterogeneous tasks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(2), pages 333-349, August.
    19. Milgrom, Paul & Weber, Robert J., 1982. "The value of information in a sealed-bid auction," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 105-114, June.
    20. Fearon, James D., 1994. "Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(3), pages 577-592, September.
    21. Krishna, Vijay & Morgan, John, 1997. "An Analysis of the War of Attrition and the All-Pay Auction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 343-362, February.
    22. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1986. "A Theory of Exit in Duopoly," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(4), pages 943-960, July.
    23. Fearon, James D., 1998. "Bargaining, Enforcement, and International Cooperation," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 52(2), pages 269-305, April.
    24. Hironori Otsubo & Amnon Rapoport, 2008. "Dynamic Volunteer's Dilemmas over a Finite Horizon," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(6), pages 961-984, December.
    25. Larson, Nathan, 2009. "Private value perturbations and informational advantage in common value auctions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 430-460, March.
    26. Anke Kessler, 1998. "The Value of Ignorance," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 339-354, Summer.
    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. Kyungmin Kim & Frances Zhiyun Xu Lee, 2014. "Information Acquisition in a War of Attrition," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 37-78, May.

    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. David P. Myatt, 2005. "Instant Exit from the Asymmetric War of Attrition," Economics Series Working Papers 160, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    2. Bingchao Huangfu & Gagan Ghosh & Heng Liu, 2023. "Resource inequality in the war of attrition," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(1), pages 33-61, March.
    3. Georgiadis, George & Kim, Youngsoo & Kwon, H. Dharma, 2022. "The absence of attrition in a war of attrition under complete information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 171-185.
    4. Li, Hongcheng, 2019. "Multi-Player War of Attrition with Asymmetric Incomplete Information," MPRA Paper 109511, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 31 Aug 2021.
    5. Paul Klemperer & Jeremy Bulow, 1999. "The Generalized War of Attrition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 175-189, March.
    6. George Georgiadis & Youngsoo Kim & H. Dharma Kwon, 2021. "The Absence of Attrition in a War of Attrition under Complete Information," Papers 2110.12013, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2021.
    7. Hannah Hörisch & Oliver Kirchkamp, 2010. "Less fighting than expected," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 347-367, July.
    8. Stenborg, Markku, 2003. "Waiting for F/OSS: Coordinating the Production of Free/Open Source Software," Discussion Papers 884, The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy.
    9. Yixuan Shi, 2022. "Dynamic Volunteer’s Dilemma with Procrastinators," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2022-17, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    10. Chatterjee, Krishnendu & Reiter, Johannes G. & Nowak, Martin A., 2012. "Evolutionary dynamics of biological auctions," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 69-80.
    11. Hironori Otsubo & Amnon Rapoport, 2008. "Dynamic Volunteer's Dilemmas over a Finite Horizon," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 52(6), pages 961-984, December.
    12. Morath, Florian & Münster, Johannes, 2008. "Private versus complete information in auctions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 101(3), pages 214-216, December.
    13. Florian Morath & Johannes Münster, 2013. "Information acquisition in conflicts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(1), pages 99-129, September.
    14. Johannes Hörner & Nicolas Sahuguet, 2011. "A war of attrition with endogenous effort levels," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 47(1), pages 1-27, May.
    15. Maxime Menuet & Petros G. Sekeris, 2021. "Overconfidence and conflict," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 59(4), pages 1483-1499, October.
    16. Kim Geofferey Jiyun & Kim Bara, 2018. "Symmetric Equilibria in a Cost-Averting War of Attrition Requiring Minimum Necessary Conceders," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-9, January.
    17. Segev, Ella & Sela, Aner, 2014. "Multi-stage sequential all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 371-382.
    18. Segev, Ella & Sela, Aner, 2014. "Sequential all-pay auctions with noisy outputs," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 251-261.
    19. Moldovanu, Benny & Sela, Aner, 2006. "Contest architecture," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 70-96, January.
    20. Geraghty, Thomas M. & Wiseman, Thomas, 2008. "Wage strikes in 1880s America: A test of the war of attrition model," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 303-326, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    war of attrition; volunteering; discrete public goods; asymmetric information; information acquisition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:ces:ceswps:_3419. 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: Klaus Wohlrabe (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cesifde.html .

    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.