IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ivi/wpasad/2014-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Public Goods: Voluntary Contributions and Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Miguel Sánchez Villalba

    (Dpto. Fundamentos del Análisis Económico)

  • Silvia Martínez-Gorricho

    (Dpto. Análisis Económico Aplicado)

Abstract

We analyze two incentive mechanisms as a way of financing public goods. Our mechanism can be interpreted as a variation of a parimutuel lottery in which the total rebate (prize) is made endogenous by setting it equal to a non-increasing function of total bets. The mechanism changes the nature of the standard VCM from a Prisoner’s Dilemma to a Stag-Hunt game. We tested —and found support for— the theoretical predictions of the model by means of a computer-based experiment. The theoretical model and the supporting experimental evidence both suggest the mechanism is an efficient and equitable means to finance public goods through voluntary contributions. In policy terms, and beyond the efficiency and equity considerations, the mechanism would be easy to implement and run given its simplicity and self-sufficiency.

Suggested Citation

  • Miguel Sánchez Villalba & Silvia Martínez-Gorricho, 2014. "Public Goods: Voluntary Contributions and Risk," Working Papers. Serie AD 2014-02, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Económicas, S.A. (Ivie).
  • Handle: RePEc:ivi:wpasad:2014-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ivie.es/downloads/docs/wpasad/wpasad-2014-02.pdf
    File Function: Fisrt version / Primera version, 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andreoni, James, 1988. "Why free ride? : Strategies and learning in public goods experiments," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 291-304, December.
    2. Andreoni, James, 1995. "Cooperation in Public-Goods Experiments: Kindness or Confusion?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(4), pages 891-904, September.
    3. John Morgan & Martin Sefton, 2000. "Funding Public Goods with Lotteries: Experimental Evidence," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 785-810.
    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. Sanchez Villalba, Miguel & Martinez Gorricho, Silvia, 2017. "Hybrid lotteries for financing public goods," MPRA Paper 80823, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    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. Nicholas Bardsley & Peter Moffatt, 2007. "The Experimetrics of Public Goods: Inferring Motivations from Contributions," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 62(2), pages 161-193, March.
    2. Andrej Angelovski & Tibor Neugebauer & Maroš Servatka, 2019. "Can Rank-Order Competition Resolve the Free-Rider Problem in the Voluntary Provision of Impure Public Goods? Experimental Evidence," Working Papers CESARE 1705, Dipartimento di Economia e Finanza, LUISS Guido Carli.
    3. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gaechter, 2008. "Heterogeneous Social Preferences And The Dynamics Of Free Riding In Public Good Experiments," Discussion Papers 2008-07, The Centre for Decision Research and Experimental Economics, School of Economics, University of Nottingham.
    4. Urs Fischbacher & Simon Gachter, 2010. "Social Preferences, Beliefs, and the Dynamics of Free Riding in Public Goods Experiments," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 541-556, March.
    5. Jonathan Maurice & Agathe Rouaix & Marc Willinger, 2013. "Income Redistribution And Public Good Provision: An Experiment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(3), pages 957-975, August.
    6. Roberto Burlando & Francesco Guala, 2002. "Overcontribution and decay in public goods experiments: a test of the heterogeneous agents hypothesis," CEEL Working Papers 0213, Cognitive and Experimental Economics Laboratory, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    7. James C. Cox & Vjollca Sadiraj, 2007. "On Modeling Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods," Public Finance Review, , vol. 35(2), pages 311-332, March.
    8. Simon P Anderson & Jacob K Goeree & Charles A Holt, 2001. "A Thoeretical Anlysis of Altruism and Decision Error in Public Goods Games," Levine's Working Paper Archive 563824000000000075, David K. Levine.
    9. Boosey, Luke A., 2017. "Conditional cooperation in network public goods experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 108-116.
    10. Chesney, Thomas & Chuah, Swee-Hoon & Hoffmann, Robert, 2009. "Virtual world experimentation: An exploratory study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 618-635, October.
    11. Martin G. Kocher & Peter Martinsson & Kristian Ove R. Myrseth & Conny E. Wollbrant, 2017. "Strong, bold, and kind: self-control and cooperation in social dilemmas," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(1), pages 44-69, March.
    12. Bodo Sturm & Joachim Weimann, 2006. "Experiments in Environmental Economics and Some Close Relatives," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(3), pages 419-457, July.
    13. Lopera Baena, Maria Adelaida, 2016. "Evidence of Conditional and Unconditional Cooperation in a Public Goods Game: Experimental Evidence from Mali," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145797, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    14. Solow, John L. & Kirkwood, Nicole, 2002. "Group identity and gender in public goods experiments," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(4), pages 403-412, August.
    15. Masel, Joanna, 2007. "A Bayesian model of quasi-magical thinking can explain observed cooperation in the public good game," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 216-231, October.
    16. Rustam Romaniuc & Gregory J. DeAngelo & Dimitri Dubois & Bryan C. McCannon, 2019. "Intergroup inequality and the breakdown of prosociality," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 20(3), pages 285-303, September.
    17. 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.
    18. Anna Conte & M. Vittoria Levati & Natalia Montinari, 2019. "Experience in public goods experiments," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 86(1), pages 65-93, February.
    19. Burton-Chellew, Maxwell, 2022. "The restart effect in social dilemmas shows humans are self-interested not altruistic," SocArXiv hgznu, Center for Open Science.
    20. Chaudhuri, Ananish & Maitra, Pushkar & Graziano, Sara, 2003. "A Dynamic Analysis of the Evolution of Conventions in a Public Goods Experiment with Intergenerational Advice," Working Papers 152, Department of Economics, The University of Auckland.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public Goods; Voluntary Contribution Mechanism; Subsidy Schemes; Laboratory Experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:ivi:wpasad:2014-02. 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: Departamento de Edición (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ievages.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.