IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/restud/v70y2003i3p589-614.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Public-Good Provision with Many Participants

Author

Listed:
  • Martin F. Hellwig

Abstract

For a nonexcludable public good with benefit and cost functions independent of the number of participants, this paper studies second-best allocations under Bayesian interim incentive compatibility and interim individual rationality. As the number of participants becomes large, second-best provision levels converge in distribution to first-best levels if the latter are bounded. Second-best provision levels become large in absolute terms but small relative to first-best levels if benefit and cost functions are isoelastic. In contrast, for an excludable public good, the ratio of second-best to first-best levels is bounded away from zero. Copyright 2003, Wiley-Blackwell.

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:restud:v:70:y:2003:i:3:p:589-614
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1467-937X.00257
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    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. Werner Güth & Martin Hellwig, 1986. "The private supply of a public good," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 5(1), pages 121-159, December.
    2. Hellwig, Martin, 2001. "The Impact of the Number of Participants on the Provision of a Public Good," Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications 01-16, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim;Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim.
    3. Schmitz, Patrick W, 1997. "Monopolistic Provision of Excludable Public Goods under Private Information," Public Finance = Finances publiques, , vol. 52(1), pages 89-101.
    4. Cramton, Peter & Gibbons, Robert & Klemperer, Paul, 1987. "Dissolving a Partnership Efficiently," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 615-632, May.
    5. Roberts, John, 1976. "The incentives for correct revelation of preferences and the number of consumers," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(4), pages 359-374, November.
    6. John O. Ledyard & Thomas R. Palfrey, 1999. "A Characterization of Interim Efficiency with Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(2), pages 435-448, March.
    7. Atkinson, A. B. & Stiglitz, J. E., 1976. "The design of tax structure: Direct versus indirect taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 6(1-2), pages 55-75.
    8. Roger B. Myerson, 1981. "Optimal Auction Design," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(1), pages 58-73, February.
    9. Zvika Neeman, 1999. "Property Rights and Efficiency of Voluntary Bargaining under Asymmetric Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(3), pages 679-691.
    10. d'Aspremont, Claude & Gerard-Varet, Louis-Andre, 1979. "Incentives and incomplete information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 11(1), pages 25-45, February.
    11. 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.
    12. Rob, Rafael, 1989. "Pollution claim settlements under private information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 307-333, April.
    13. John O. Ledyard & Thomas R. Palfrey, 1994. "Voting and Lottery Drafts as Efficient Public Goods Mechanisms," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 61(2), pages 327-355.
    14. Norman,P., 2000. "Efficient mechanisms for public goods with use exclusions," Working papers 15, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    15. Al-Najjar, Nabil I. & Smorodinsky, Rann, 2000. "Pivotal Players and the Characterization of Influence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 318-342, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. 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.
    2. Martin Hellwig, 2004. "Optimal Income Taxation, Public-Goods Provision and Public-Sector Pricing: A Contribution to the Foundations of Public Economics," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2004_14, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    3. Pérez-Nievas, Mikel, 2000. "Interim efficient allocation mechanisms," UC3M Working papers. Economics 7220, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    4. Ledyard, John O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2007. "A general characterization of interim efficient mechanisms for independent linear environments," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 441-466, March.
    5. Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "On the Legitimacy of Coercion for the Financing of Public Goods," Working Papers 2009.98, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    6. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2014. "Toward an efficiency rationale for the public provision of private goods," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(2), pages 375-408, June.
    7. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    8. Hellwig, Martin F., 2005. "A utilitarian approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 1981-2003, December.
    9. Hellwig, Martin F., 2007. "The provision and pricing of excludable public goods: Ramsey-Boiteux pricing versus bundling," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(3-4), pages 511-540, April.
    10. Bierbrauer, Felix, 2009. "On the legitimacy of coercion for the nancing of public goods," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 265, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    11. Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "On the Legitimacy of Coercion for the Financing of Public Goods," CESifo Working Paper Series 2663, CESifo.
    12. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2002. "Simple contracts, renegotiation under asymmetric information, and the hold-up problem," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 169-188, January.
    13. Martin Hellwig & Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "Public Good Provision in a Large Economy," 2009 Meeting Papers 1062, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    14. Börgers, Tilman & Postl, Peter, 2009. "Efficient compromising," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2057-2076, September.
    15. Felix Bierbrauer, 2010. "An incomplete contracts perspective on the provision and pricing of excludable public goods," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2010_01, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    16. Felix Bierbrauer, 2009. "On the legitimacy of coercion for the financing of public goods," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2009_15, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    17. Schmitz, Patrick W., 2002. "On Monopolistic Licensing Strategies under Asymmetric Information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(1), pages 177-189, September.
    18. Fang,H. & Norman,P., 2003. "An efficiency rationale for bundling of public goods," Working papers 19, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    19. Loertscher, Simon & Wasser, Cédric, 2019. "Optimal structure and dissolution of partnerships," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(3), July.
    20. Stefan Behringer, 2005. "The Provision of a Public Good with a direct Provision Technology and Large Number of Agents," JEPS Working Papers 05-007, JEPS.

    More about this item

    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:oup:restud:v:70:y:2003:i:3:p:589-614. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/restud .

    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.