IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v185y2020ics002205311930105x.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

All or nothing: State capacity and optimal public goods provision

Author

Listed:
  • Bierbrauer, Felix
  • Winkelmann, Justus

Abstract

We study public goods provision subject to ex post incentive and participation constraints. We also impose a requirement of anonymity. Different public goods can be bundled if sufficient resources are available. The analysis focuses on the all-or-nothing-mechanism: Expand provision as much as is resource feasible if no one vetoes - otherwise stick to the status quo. We show that the probability of the all-outcome converges to one as the capacity becomes unbounded. For a given finite capacity, we provide conditions under which the all-or-nothing-mechanism is ex ante welfare-maximizing - even though, ex post, it involves an overprovision of public goods.

Suggested Citation

  • Bierbrauer, Felix & Winkelmann, Justus, 2020. "All or nothing: State capacity and optimal public goods provision," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:185:y:2020:i:c:s002205311930105x
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2019.104955
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002205311930105X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2019.104955?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dave Donaldson, 2018. "Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(4-5), pages 899-934, April.
    2. Erik Hornung, 2015. "Railroads And Growth In Prussia," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 699-736, August.
    3. Mark Bagnoli & Ted Bergstrom, 2006. "Log-concave probability and its applications," Studies in Economic Theory, in: Charalambos D. Aliprantis & Rosa L. Matzkin & Daniel L. McFadden & James C. Moore & Nicholas C. Yann (ed.), Rationality and Equilibrium, pages 217-241, Springer.
    4. Werner Güth & Martin Hellwig, 1986. "The private supply of a public good," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 121-159, December.
    5. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "Characterization of Satisfactory Mechanisms for the Revelation of Preferences for Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(2), pages 427-438, March.
    6. Yaron Azrieli & Semin Kim, 2014. "Pareto Efficiency And Weighted Majority Rules," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 55, pages 1067-1088, November.
    7. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2012. "Robust Mechanism Design," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Robust Mechanism Design The Role of Private Information and Higher Order Beliefs, chapter 2, pages 49-96, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    8. George J. Mailath & Andrew Postlewaite, 1990. "Asymmetric Information Bargaining Problems with Many Agents," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 57(3), pages 351-367.
    9. Kuzmics, Christoph & Steg, Jan-Henrik, 2017. "On public good provision mechanisms with dominant strategies and balanced budget," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 56-69.
    10. Voth, Hans-Joachim & Voigtländer, Nico, 2014. "Highway To Hitler," CEPR Discussion Papers 9983, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Martin F. Hellwig, 2003. "Public-Good Provision with Many Participants," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 70(3), pages 589-614.
    12. Moritz Drexl & Andreas Kleiner, 2018. "Why Voting? A Welfare Analysis," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 253-271, August.
    13. Satterthwaite, Mark Allen, 1975. "Strategy-proofness and Arrow's conditions: Existence and correspondence theorems for voting procedures and social welfare functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 10(2), pages 187-217, April.
    14. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gerard-Varet, Louis-Andre, 1979. "Incentives and incomplete information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 25-45, February.
    15. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2005. "Overcoming Participation Constraints," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1511R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Apr 2006.
    16. Schmitz, Patrick W. & Tröger, Thomas, 2012. "The (sub-)optimality of the majority rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 74(2), pages 651-665.
    17. Peter Norman, 2004. "Efficient Mechanisms for Public Goods with Use Exclusions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(4), pages 1163-1188.
    18. Green, Jerry & Laffont, Jean-Jacques, 1977. "On the revelation of preferences for public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 8(1), pages 79-93, August.
    19. Felix J. Bierbrauer & Martin F. Hellwig, 2016. "Robustly Coalition-Proof Incentive Mechanisms for Public Good Provision are Voting Mechanisms and Vice Versa," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(4), pages 1440-1464.
    20. Rae, Douglas W., 1969. "Decision-Rules and Individual Values in Constitutional Choice," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(1), pages 40-56, March.
    21. Matthew O Jackson & Hugo F Sonnenschein, 2007. "Overcoming Incentive Constraints by Linking Decisions -super-1," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(1), pages 241-257, January.
    22. Gibbard, Allan, 1973. "Manipulation of Voting Schemes: A General Result," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 587-601, July.
    23. Cremer, Jacques & McLean, Richard P, 1988. "Full Extraction of the Surplus in Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 56(6), pages 1247-1257, November.
    24. Fogel, Robert William, 1962. "A Quantitative Approach to the Study of Railroads in American Economic Growth: A Report of Some Preliminary Findings," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 22(2), pages 163-197, June.
    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. Gorkem Celik & Dongsoo Shin & Roland Strausz, 2021. "Public good overprovision by a manipulative provider," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(2), pages 314-333, June.
    2. Thiago Christiano Silva & Solange Maria Guerra & Marcus Vinicius B. Santos, 2022. "The role of externalities in fiscal efficiency," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 62(6), pages 2827-2864, June.
    3. Hagen, Martin & Hernando-Veciana, Ángel, 2021. "Multidimensional bargaining and posted prices," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).

    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. Felix Bierbrauer & Justus Winkelmann, 2018. "All or Nothing: State Capacity and Optimal Public Goods Provision," CESifo Working Paper Series 7238, CESifo.
    2. Kuzmics, Christoph & Steg, Jan-Henrik, 2017. "On public good provision mechanisms with dominant strategies and balanced budget," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 170(C), pages 56-69.
    3. Alex Gershkov & Benny Moldovanu & Xianwen Shi, 2017. "Optimal Voting Rules," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 84(2), pages 688-717.
    4. Alex Gershkov & Benny Moldovanu & Xianwen Shi, 2013. "Optimal Mechanism Design without Money," Working Papers tecipa-481, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    5. Börgers, Tilman & Postl, Peter, 2009. "Efficient compromising," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2057-2076, September.
    6. Jin Xi & Haitian Xie, 2021. "Strength in Numbers: Robust Mechanisms for Public Goods with Many Agents," Papers 2101.02423, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.
    7. Moritz Drexl & Andreas Kleiner, 2018. "Why Voting? A Welfare Analysis," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 253-271, August.
    8. Martin Hellwig, 2015. "Financial Stability and Monetary Policy," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2015_10, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    9. Simon Loertscher & Leslie M. Marx, 2022. "To sell public or private goods," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 26(3), pages 385-415, September.
    10. Martin Hellwig & Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "Public Good Provision in a Large Economy," 2009 Meeting Papers 1062, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    11. Grüner, Hans Peter & Koriyama, Yukio, 2012. "Public goods, participation constraints, and democracy: A possibility theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 152-167.
    12. Alex Gershkov & Jacob K. Goeree & Alexey Kushnir & Benny Moldovanu & Xianwen Shi, 2013. "On the Equivalence of Bayesian and Dominant Strategy Implementation," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(1), pages 197-220, January.
    13. Martimort, David, 2019. ""When Olson Meets Dahl": From Inefficient Groups Formation to Inefficient Policy-Making," CEPR Discussion Papers 13843, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    14. Tobias Rachidi, 2020. "Optimal Voting Mechanisms on Generalized Single-Peaked Domains," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_214, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    15. Hans Gersbach & Oriol Tejada, 2024. "Semi-flexible majority rules for public good provision," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 63(3), pages 677-715, November.
    16. Shao, Ran & Zhou, Lin, 2016. "Voting and optimal provision of a public good," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 35-41.
    17. Grüner, Hans Peter, 2008. "Public goods, participation constraints, and democracy: A possibility theorem," CEPR Discussion Papers 7066, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Takashi Kunimoto & Cuiling Zhang, 2021. "On incentive compatible, individually rational public good provision mechanisms," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 57(2), pages 431-468, August.
    19. Felix Bierbrauer, 2006. "Distortionary Taxation and the Free-Rider Problem," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2006_6, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    20. Marek Pycia & Peter Troyan, 2023. "A Theory of Simplicity in Games and Mechanism Design," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(4), pages 1495-1526, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Public goods; Bundling; State capacity; Mechanism design;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D79 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Other
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:eee:jetheo:v:185:y:2020:i:c:s002205311930105x. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    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.