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Social justice, as a concept, has long been considered inimical to the classical liberal tradition (Nozick 1973, 1974; Hayek 1976). To be fair, there is much to criticize about the [...]

This natural field experiment tests the effects of purely symbolic awards on volunteer retention in a public goods context. The experiment is conducted at Wikipedia, which faces declining editor retention rates, particularly among newcomers. Randomization assures that award receipt is orthogonal to previous performance. The analysis reveals that awards have a sizeable effect on newcomer retention, which persists over the four quarters following the initial intervention. This is noteworthy for indicating that awards for volunteers can be effective even if they have no impact on the volunteers' future career opportunities. The awards are purely symbolic, and the status increment they produce is limited to the recipients' pseudonymous online identities in a community they have just recently joined. The results can be explained by enhanced self-identification with the community, but they are also in line with recent findings on the role of status and reputation, recognition, and evaluation potential in online communities. History: Accepted by John List, behavioral economics. Open Access Statement: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt this work, but you must attribute this work as 'Management Science. Copyright [c] 2016 The Author(s). https://doi.org/10 .1287/mnsc.2016.2540, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License: https://creative commons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.' Funding: The author acknowledges financial support from the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Schweizerische Gemeinnutzige Gesellschaft, and the Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA), Switzerland. The experiment was reviewed and approved by the Research Directors of CREMA. Supplemental Material: Data and online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ mnsc.2016.2540. Keywords: economics * behavior and behavioral decision making * public good provision * awards and motivation * natural field experiment * Wikipedia * online community management, 1. Introduction Wikipedia is an undisputed success story. It is the largest online encyclopedia, and its content is provided and cura ted by voluntary contributors (editors). As of May 2015, [...]

Access to resources through ethnic group membership is often presumed to affect the intensity of ethnic identification. We examine this premise using survey data on three ethnic groups in Mauritius: Creoles, Hindus, and Muslims. Two key findings emerge from our research. First, access to material resources explains only a modest proportion of total variation in ethnic identification within each group. Second, the resources that affect ethnic identification differ significantly across groups. Access to political goods through group membership affects Hindu identification but is unrelated to ethnic identification among Creoles or Muslims. Conversely, access to economic goods affects Creole and Muslim identification but has no effect on Hindu identification. Explaining these group differences leads us beyond a basic means--ends instrumentalist model to identify conditions that likely mediate the relationship between individual interests and collective identification including the divisibility of economic goods relative to political goods in Mauritius. Keywords: Ethnic identity; social identification; competition; instrumentalism; ethnic mobilization; Mauritius.

The effect of inequality within groups on individual contributions in public goods experiments is investigated. Inequality reduced contributions to the public good for all group members.

Selfishness is seldom considered a group-beneficial strategy. In the typical evolutionary formulation, altruism benefits the group, selfishness undermines altruism, and the purpose of the model is to identify mechanisms, such as kinship or reciprocity, that enable altruism to evolve. Recent models have explored punishment as an important mechanism favoring the evolution of altruism, but punishment can be costly to the punisher, making it a form of second-order altruism. This model identifies a strategy called 'selfish punisher' that involves behaving selfishly in first-order interactions and altruistically in second-order interactions by punishing other selfish individuals. Selfish punishers cause selfishness to be a self-limiting strategy, enabling altruists to coexist in a stable equilibrium. This polymorphism can be regarded as a division of labor, or mutualism, in which the benefits obtained by first-order selfishness help to 'pay' for second-order altruism. punishment | cooperation | mutualism | game theory | public goods

Social dilemmas are situations in which individual incentives and group incentives conflict. Public goods sustained by contributions of time and money, such as public television, and resource goods sustained by restraint from taking, such as rain forests, represent two types of social dilemmas. In this study, we examine whether the two types of social dilemmas generate the same amount of cooperation when the costs and benefits are exactly the same. Rational choice perspectives suggest equivalent levels of cooperation, whereas alternative perspectives such as prospect theory suggest that resource goods might generate greater cooperation. Combining prospect theory and strategic game theory, we predict that resource good settings will have higher levels of cooperation. We test the predictions in two different cultures: the United States and the People's Republic of China. We find consistent patterns: in both countries, group members were more cooperative when faced with resource goods dilemmas than when faced with public goods dilemmas.

Must the integration of markets be accompanied by the harmonization of societies' institutions? We study a model of heterogenous individuals where a public good directly affects returns from trade. Trade takes place in the market, whereas the public good is provided by the jurisdiction, and individuals choose which market and which jurisdiction to join. Although trade between different jurisdictions entails transaction costs, only at intermediate market sizes must trading partners belong to a single jurisdiction. When markets are small, multiple jurisdictions can exist, although a single one is preferable; when markets are large, multiple jurisdictions are both possible and desirable.

Allowing players in public goods games to make small incremental commitments to contributing to the good might facilitate cooperation because it helps to prevent players from being 'free ridden,' contributing more to the public good than other group members. Two experiments using a real-time version of the voluntary contribution mechanism were conducted to investigate the hypothesis that players are generally willing to contribute public goods conditional on beliefs that others are doing so at similar levels. Experiment 1 provided evidence that affording a strategy of commitment can increase the production of public goods. Experiment 2 provided evidence that most players are willing to contribute to the public good at a level at or slightly above the contribution of the lowest contributor in the group. Both experiments point to inequity aversion as an important element of play in public goods games.

Byline: Marc Willinger (1), Anthony Ziegelmeyer (2) Keywords: experimental economics; public goods; interior equilibria; altruism; decision error; logit equilibrium Abstract: We present the results of an experiment on voluntary contributions to a public good with a unique dominant strategy equilibrium in the interior of the strategy space. The treatment variable is the equilibrium contribution level. By increasing the equilibrium contribution level, we reduce the 'strength' of the social dilemma. Though we observe that the average level of contribution rises with the equilibrium contribution level, the average rate of over-contribution is not affected in a systematic way. Over-contribution is statistically significant only at the lower level of equilibrium contribution but not at the higher levels. We show that the Anderson et al. (1998, Journal of Public Economics. 70, 297--323) logit equilibrium model which combines altruism and decision errors fits quite well our laboratory data. Author Affiliation: (1) Institut Universitaire de France, BETA-Theme--, Universite Louis Pasteur, 61, avenue de la Foret Noire, F--67085, Strasbourg Cedex, France (2) BETA-Theme--, Universite Louis Pasteur, 61, avenue de la Foret Noire, F--67085, Strasbourg Cedex, France Article History: Registration Date: 12/10/2004

This study examines factors affecting cooperation in public goods settings involving relatively small groups. In particular, the gender composition of the group and the history of the group's level of cooperation are investigated. Three game-theoretical predictions are posited. Using expectation states theory and social identity theory, I offer two different sets of hypotheses regarding gender identity. A 3x2 experimental design tests the predictions; the factors are gender composition of the groups and others' behavior. All game theory predictions are supported. Further, for the public goods setting examined, expectation states theories provide more accurate models of group members' behavior than social identity theories.

This study focuses on behavioral reactions to unequal distributions of wealth. In an experimental study it is demonstrated that if a group is in a position to provide a public' good, group members seize the opportunity to redistribute wealth. Redistribution of wealth through provision of public goods was more extreme if the initial distribution wealth was incongruent with the group members inputs (in terms of effort) than if it was congruent with those inputs. Results are interpreted in terms of equity theory and status-value theory.

The Harambeemovement in Kenya consists of voluntary self-help programs which provide publicgoods such as education, health care, water supply and agricultural services. The economic implications of the Kenyan government's support and administrationof Harambee projects are discussed. The economic impetus of private households'donations to Harambee programs within a single game prisoner's dilemma model ispresented. It was suggested that the government can maximize the benefits of the Harambee system by allowing it to provide public goods which can be offeredby the private sector.

The provision of public goods is a social dilemma in which individuals must decide whether to contribute to the group or not to contribute and therfore free ride. We posit that if individuals have information about how each of the other group members has contributed, free riding will occur less frequently than if they do not have this information. If individuals know how others have contributed, they are able to employ trigger strategies. Three experimental treatments are used to test our predictions: (1) no information about other members' contributions, (2) aggregated information about other members' contributions, and (3) individualized information about each member's contribution. We find that contributions to a public good in the individualized information condition are greater than contributions in the other two conditions. However, contribution levels for no information and aggregated information do not differ.

Our aim is to draw a set of distinctions among types of goods which has significant implications for theories of distributive justice. We begin by providing a general account of two sets of properties--fungibility and nonfungibility, divisibility and indivisibility--and argue that goods can be distinguished according to these criteria. Further, we contend that these distinctions entail complications for structural principles of distributive justice (i.e., principles such as maximin that distribute payoffs to positions). As an example we consider James Fishkin's discussion of structural principles, arguing that Fishkin's view that (i) value, structure, and assignment are independent holds only to the degree that the goods considered are fungible and divisible, (ii) structural principles face difficulties beyond those which Fishkin identifies and addresses with his principle of nontyranny, since structural principles cannot accomodate highly nonfungible, indivisible goods, and (iii) these difficulties can be managed through the application of a value-sensitive proviso. We then show that two important goods, medical care and advanced education, are highly nonfungible and indivisible and thus support the distinctions drawn earlier. Finally, we specify the nature of complementary contributions as well as coordination problems between structural principles and the value-sensitive proviso in their application to distributive justice issues.

We find that a process of voluntary association where individuals express a preference about whom they want to be associated with can create strong incentives to increase efficiency and contributions in provision of a public good. This process of endogenous group formation perfectly sorted contributions by the order of group formation. Comparison of middle and last period behaviour suggests that a majority of the subject population are conditional cooperators, with a minority of monetary payoff maximisers. The experiment illustrates that under favourable conditions, where the opportunities of entry and exit are symmetrically balanced, a process of voluntary association can mitigate the free-rider problem.

The ability to use the amenities or other characteristics of a location may be a function of the length of time a household has resided in the location. We explore the implications of the hypothesis that the enjoyment of regional amenities depends on the accumulation of amenityspecific human capital. We establish that the interaction of this human capital with regional wage rates determines lifecycle locational trajectories. The model explains the timing of moves in the working and retirement periods of life as well as observed heterogeneity in household behavior. Small differences between households may result in dramatically different lifecycle behavior.

The state has, since its origins, been characterized both by the production of public goods and a competition for the surplus benefits generated by the creation of those goods. Holmstrom's (1982) analysis of an impossibility result leads to the conclusion that this problem is logically inescapable. There is no process for exactly allocating the benefits of an interdependent social process that eliminates moral hazard. Furthermore, morally hazardous behavior can undermine the efficiency of the processes that generate the benefits. In both firms and states, therefore, the credible constraint of morally hazardous behavior is a fundamental concern. In both forms of social organization, delegation to bureaucracy can enhance efficiency by creating barriers between those actors with moral hazard and the producers of the benefits. The characteristics of Weberian bureaucracy, including rational/legal constraints and autonomous professional norms, serve to insulate bureaucrats from efficiency-undermining political pressures. This perspective provides support for concerns of the century-old Progressive reform tradition, which wanted to place bureaucrats 'above politics'--and stands in contrast to the more recent principal/agency perspective, which argues that the fundamental problem is the creation of incentive systems that make bureaucratic subordinates increasingly responsive to the preferences of political superiors., The state, like Janus, has two faces: one benign and one malevolent. The creation of the state facilitates the provision of public goods that would otherwise be absent. But the [...]

The present article presents a brief theoretical overview about the role of trust in promoting cooperation in public goods dilemmas. Until now, no research has been conducted to explore the [...]

This paper considers the problem of designing mechanisms whose Nash allocations coincide with the Lindahl allocations for public goods economies with more than one private good. Unlike previous mechanisms, the mechanism presented here has a single-valued, feasible, and continuous outcome function. Furthermore, when there are no public goods in economies, feasible and continuous implementation of the (constrained) Walrasian correspondence can be obtained as a corollary of our Theorem 1.

Standard economic intuition would say that private provision of public goods will be inefficient due to free-rider problems. This view is in contrast to the results in the literature on full implementation where it is shown that (under certain conditions) games exist which only have efficient equilibria. The games usually used to demonstrate existence are quite complex and have efficient equilibria. The games usually used to demonstrate existence are quite complex and seem 'unnatural', possibly leading to the perception that implementation requires a central authority to choose and impose the game. In a simple public goods setting, we show that a very natural game--similar to one often used elsewhere in the literature to model private provision--In fact fully implements the core of this economy in undominated perfect equilibria. More specifically, we consider a complete information economy with one private good and two possible social decisions. Agents voluntarily comtribute any non-negative amount of the private good they choose and the social decision is to provide the public good iff contributions are sufficient to pay for it. The contributions are refunded otherwise. The set of undominated perfect equilibrium outcomes of this game is exactly the core of the economy. We give some extensions of this result, discuss the role of perfection and alternative equilibrium notions, and discuss the intuition and implications of the results.

A study was conducted to examine how axioms of social choice functions react with economies having one private good and one pure public good. It was observed that the strategy-proofness proposition is true for this condition as no agents are seen to benefit by misrepresenting his preferences. The anonymity axiom is also accurate as when the preferences of two agents are switched, it was found that their consumption bundles are also transposed. The remaining axioms that include symmetry and individual rationality were also found to be true.