Partial Versus General Compulsory Solidarity: an Experimental Analysis

We focus on ways and means of solidarity and their more or less voluntary and involuntary character. Alternative ways of redistribution are modeled by combining redistribution as emergent from a non-discriminatory voluntary contribution mechanism, VCM, with an outside option for a “super-rich”, R, participant to donate to VCM participants. The outsider may discriminate between participants of the VCM on the basis of information accessible at a cost to her. Inclusion in and exclusion from the VCM are involuntary while contributions in it are voluntary. How involuntary inclusion of R in VCM affects her discriminatory voluntary donations and contribution behavior is explored experimentally.

Estimation of Treatment Effects in Repeated Public Goods Experiments

This paper provides a new statistical model for repeated voluntary contribution mechanism games. In a repeated public goods experiment, contributions in the first round are cross-sectionally independent simply because subjects are randomly selected. Meanwhile, contributions to a public account over rounds are serially and cross-sectionally correlated. Furthermore, the cross-sectional average of the contributions across subjects usually decreases over rounds. By considering this non-stationary initial condition—the initial contribution has a different distribution from the rest of the contributions—we model statistically the time varying patterns of the average contribution in repeated public goods experiments and then propose a simple but efficient method to test for treatment effects. The suggested method has good finite sample performance and works well in practice.

Voluntary Contributions and Collective Redistribution

I study a multilateral bargaining game in which committee members invest in a common project prior to redistributing the total value of production. The game corresponds to a Baron and Ferejohn (1989) legislative bargaining model preceded by a production stage that is similar to a voluntary contribution mechanism. In this game, contributions reach almost full efficiency in a random rematching experimental design. Bargaining outcomes tend to follow an equity standard of proportionality: higher contributors obtain higher shares. Unlike other bargaining experiments with an exogenous fund, allocations involving payments to all members are modal instead of minimum winning coalitions, and proposer power is quite low. (JEL C78, D63, D71, D72, H41)