IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/clt/sswopa/717.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Voting and Lottery Drafts as Efficient Public Goods Mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Ledyard, John O.
  • Palfrey, Thomas R.

Abstract

This paper characterizes interim efficient mechanisms for public good production and cost allocation in a two-type environment with risk neutral, quasi-linear preferences and fixed size projects, where the distribution of the private good, as well as the public goods decision, affects social welfare. An efficient public good decision can always be accomplished by a majority voting scheme, where the number of ``YES'' votes required depends on the welfare weights in a simple way. The results are shown to have a natural geometry and an intuitive interpretation. We also extend these results to allow for restrictions on feasible transfer rules, ranging from the traditional unlimited transfers to the extreme case of no transfers. For a range of welfare weights, an optimal scheme is a two-stage procedure which combines a voting stage with a second stage where an even-chance lottery is used to determine who pays. We call this the ``lottery draft mechanism''. Since such a cost-sharing scheme does not require transfers, it follows that in many cases transfers are not necessary to achieve the optimal allocation. For other ranges of welfare weights the second stage is more complicated, but the voting stage remains the same. If transfers are completely infeasible, randomized voting rules may be optimal. The paper also provides a geometric characterization of the effects of voluntary participation constraints. JEL Classification: 024, 026
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., "undated". "Voting and Lottery Drafts as Efficient Public Goods Mechanisms," Working Papers 717, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
  • Handle: RePEc:clt:sswopa:717
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/SSPapers/sswp717.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of 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. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1984. "Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 171-193, July.
    3. Roger B. Myerson, 1978. "Optimal Auction Design," Discussion Papers 362, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    4. Werner Güth & Martin Hellwig, 1986. "The private supply of a public good," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 121-159, December.
    5. Holmstrom, Bengt & Myerson, Roger B, 1983. "Efficient and Durable Decision Rules with Incomplete Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 51(6), pages 1799-1819, November.
    6. Border, Kim C, 1991. "Implementation of Reduced Form Auctions: A Geometric Approach," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(4), pages 1175-1187, July.
    7. George J. Mailath & Andrew Postlewaite, 1990. "Asymmetric Information Bargaining Problems with Many Agents," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(3), pages 351-367.
    8. Myerson, Roger B. & Satterthwaite, Mark A., 1983. "Efficient mechanisms for bilateral trading," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 265-281, April.
    9. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1988. "Private incentives in social dilemmas : The effects of incomplete information and altruism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 309-332, April.
    10. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    11. Maskin, Eric S & Riley, John G, 1984. "Optimal Auctions with Risk Averse Buyers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1473-1518, November.
    12. L. Hurwicz, 1979. "Outcome Functions Yielding Walrasian and Lindahl Allocations at Nash Equilibrium Points," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(2), pages 217-225.
    13. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1991. "Testing for effects of cheap talk in a public goods game with private information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(2), pages 183-220, May.
    14. Theodore Groves & John Ledyard, 1977. "Some limitations of demand revelaing processes," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 29(2), pages 107-124, March.
    15. Matthews, Steven A, 1984. "On the Implementability of Reduced Form Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(6), pages 1519-1522, November.
    16. van de Kragt, Alphons J. C. & Orbell, John M. & Dawes, Robyn M., 1983. "The Minimal Contributing Set as a Solution to Public Goods Problems," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 77(1), pages 112-122, March.
    17. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    18. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-631, July.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. 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.
    2. Simon Loertscher & Leslie M. Marx, 2022. "Incomplete Information Bargaining with Applications to Mergers, Investment, and Vertical Integration," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 112(2), pages 616-649, February.
    3. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    4. Simon Loertscher & Leslie M. Marx, 2022. "To sell public or private goods," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 26(3), pages 385-415, September.
    5. Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2007. "A general characterization of interim efficient mechanisms for independent linear environments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 441-466, March.
    6. Xu Lang, 2022. "Reduced-form budget allocation with multiple public alternatives," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(2), pages 335-359, August.
    7. Dilip Mookherjee, 2008. "The 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Mechanism Design Theory," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 110(2), pages 237-260, June.
    8. Philippe Jehiel & Laurent Lamy, 2018. "A Mechanism Design Approach to the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 735-760.
    9. Gary-Bobo, Robert J. & Jaaidane, Touria, 2000. "Polling mechanisms and the demand revelation problem," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 203-238, May.
    10. Jehiel, Philippe & Meyer-ter-Vehn, Moritz & Moldovanu, Benny, 2007. "Mixed bundling auctions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 494-512, May.
    11. Börgers, Tilman & Postl, Peter, 2009. "Efficient compromising," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2057-2076, September.
    12. Xu Lang & Zaifu Yang, 2021. "Reduced-Form Allocations for Multiple Indivisible Objects under Constraints: A Revision," Discussion Papers 21/05, Department of Economics, University of York.
    13. Esther Gal-Or & Anindya Ghose, 2005. "The Economic Incentives for Sharing Security Information," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 16(2), pages 186-208, June.
    14. Xu Lang & Zaifu Yang, 2023. "Reduced-Form Allocations for Multiple Indivisible Objects under Constraints," Discussion Papers 23/02, Department of Economics, University of York.
    15. Steven R. Williams, 1994. "A Characterization of Efficient," Discussion Papers 1100, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
    16. Thierry Marchant & Debasis Mishra, 2015. "Mechanism design with two alternatives in quasi-linear environments," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 44(2), pages 433-455, February.
    17. Vijay Krishna & Motty Perry, 1997. "Efficient Mechanism Design," Game Theory and Information 9703010, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 28 Apr 1998.
    18. Monique Florenzano, 2009. "From equilibrium models to mechanism design: On the place and the role of government in the public goods provision analysis in the second part of the twentieth century," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00367859, HAL.
    19. Monique Florenzano, 2010. "Government and the provision of public goods:from equilibrium models to mechanismdesign," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 1047-1077.
    20. Ryuji Sano, 2018. "An equilibrium analysis of a core-selecting package auction with reserve prices," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 22(3), pages 101-122, December.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty

    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:clt:sswopa:717. 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: Victoria Mason (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/ss .

    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.