scholarly journals Mechanism Design with Public Goods: Committee Karate, Cooperative Games, and the Control of Social Decisions Through Subcommittees

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles R. Plott ◽  
Brian Merlob
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Mechanism Design ◽  
Cooperative Games ◽  
Social Decisions

Distributed Mechanism Design With Learning Guarantees for Private and Public Goods Problems

2020 ◽  
Vol 65 (10) ◽  
pp. 4106-4121
Author(s):  
Abhinav Sinha ◽  
Achilleas Anastasopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Mechanism Design ◽  
Private And Public

The Wicksellian Unanimity Rule: The Competing Interpretations of Buchanan and Musgrave

2006 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Johnson
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Public Economics ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Public Expenditures ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Tax Cost ◽  
Voting Rule ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Benefit Principle ◽  
Voting Mechanism

The disparate approaches of James Buchanan and Richard Musgrave to public economics are both anchored in Knut Wicksell's contribution to the theory of public goods. In “A New Principle of Just Taxation,” the second essay of Finanztheoretische Untersuchungen (1896 [1994]), Wickseil considered how to design a voting mechanism to finance public goods and assure a just distribution of the tax burden. Applying the benefit principle to taxation, Wicksell argued that a unanimity-voting rule would guarantee that all individuals receive benefits commensurate to their tax cost from any public good. “No one can complain if he secures a benefit which he himself considers to be (greater or at least) as great as the price he has to pay” (Wicksell 1994, p. 79). Wicksell's primary interest was not in determining the appropriate mix of public and private, instead he demonstrated how one might finance public expenditures provided the decision of the mix has already been made. The actual voting mechanism is much less controversial than the philosophy and antecedent assumptions behind the process. While Musgrave and Buchanan share common ground, agreeing to the originality of Wicksell's work, and the necessity of considering the rules by which social decisions are made, their views on Wicksell are generally acknowledged to be radically different (Bernd Hansjurgens 1999, Pieter Hennipman 1982, David Riesman 1990).

scholarly journals Hunger affects social decisions in a multi-round Public Goods Game but not a single-shot Ultimatum Game

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sam Fraser ◽  
Daniel Nettle
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Ultimatum Game ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Experimental Tests ◽  
Single Shot ◽  
Social Cooperation ◽  
Public Goods Game ◽  
Group Cooperation ◽  
Social Decisions ◽  
Group Members

Objective. People have the intuition that hunger undermines social cooperation, but experimental tests of this have often produced null results. One possible explanation is that the experimental tasks used are not rich enough to capture the diverse pathways by which social cooperation can be sustained or break down in real life. We studied the effects of hunger on cooperation in two tasks of differential interaction richness. Methods. We manipulated hunger by asking participants to eat, or refrain from eating, breakfast. Participants in experiment 1 (n = 106) played a one-shot Ultimatum Game. Participants in experiment 2 (n = 264) played twenty rounds of a Public Goods Game in the same groups of four, ten rounds with the possibility of punishing other group members, and ten without. Results. In experiment 1, skipping breakfast had no significant effects on either amounts proposed or minimum acceptable offers. In experiment 2, there were multiple different significant effects of the manipulation. No-breakfast participants were more generous in the first round of the game without punishment, and in subsequent rounds, were more influenced by what other group members had done the round before. In the punishment game, no-breakfast participants were also less likely to punish their group-mates than breakfast participants. Consequently, the possibility of punishment was less effective in increasing group cooperation levels in no-breakfast groups. Conclusion. Replicating earlier findings, we found a null effect of hunger on cooperation in a one-shot Ultimatum Game. However, in our richer Public Goods Game, the dynamics of cooperation differed with hunger, in subtle ways not simply classifiable as hungry participants being ‘more’ or ‘less’ cooperative overall.

scholarly journals Public Goods with Congestion: A Mechanism Design Approach

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oleksii Birulin
Keyword(s):  
Public Goods ◽  
Mechanism Design ◽  
Design Approach
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