Community’s knowledge need and knowledge sharing in Wikipedia

Purpose In practice, showing the community’s need for knowledge (e.g. listing requests for new articles) is used to drive knowledge sharing in Wikipedia. Yet, theoretical understanding of how it influences one’s knowledge sharing is still lacking. The aim of this study is to develop a model of the influence and show that one takes others’ utility into account (utility interdependence). Design/methodology/approach The proposed model was tested with data collected in a survey of 323 Wikipedia users. Findings Others’ knowledge need affects one’s perceived forgone benefit of free riding (i.e. a cost of knowledge sharing) and, thereby, increases the intention to share knowledge. Originality/value This study contributes to research by identifying utility interdependence in knowledge sharing. For practice, the findings provide empirical support for the general belief that showing others’ knowledge need is useful for promoting sharing.

Doch keine Freizügigkeit für Arme? – Zur Notwendigkeit einer Abwägung unterschiedlicher konstitutioneller Interessen

In reply to Jörg Markt and Gerhard Schick in this volume, this paper argues for a different view on social assistance and migration. First, this article will present some methodological conditions for constitutional contracts. Lacking empirical testability, the method of constitutional economics particularly needs the revelation of constitutional interests before evaluating alternative rules. By testing the described alternative rules of migration in the face of potential constitutional interests, it will be shown that no rule discussed meets all targets. The reader has to be aware that Märkt/Schick decided to meet the target of free migration for welfare recipients and thereby missed some essential targets of social assistance. In this paper it is questioned, if the objective of free migration for welfare recipients is as important as it looks at first glance. It is argued that liberty as a constitutional interest can be restricted by rational constitutional voters. Behind the veil of uncertainty it might be necessary to limit the external diseconomy from free-riding welfare recipients in social assistance schemes or the external diseconomy from the poor in the utility-interdependence sense. If the reader comes to share this point of view, there is no need to harm the original constitutional interests related to social assistance.

Brennan and Walsh Reconsidered (Mutt and Jeff Ride Again)

Geoffrey Brennan and Cliff Walsh contrast the different transfer patterns of Pareto-optimal redistribution of income resulting from our model (American Economic Review, 1969) and from the model used by von Furstenberg and Mueller (FM). They attempt to show that our model is inconsistent and that, when corrected, would produce a similar transfer pattern to that of FM. We argue that our paper was more general than they allege and that the differences between the transfer patterns in our model and that of FM reflect differences in the concept of horizontal equity and assumptions about utility interdependence, and not any inconsistency on our part.