IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1809.06421.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Vitalik Buterin
  • Zoe Hitzig
  • E. Glen Weyl

Abstract

We propose a design for philanthropic or publicly-funded seeding to allow (near) optimal provision of a decentralized, self-organizing ecosystem of public goods. The concept extends ideas from Quadratic Voting to a funding mechanism for endogenous community formation. Individuals make public goods contributions to projects of value to them. The amount received by the project is (proportional to) the square of the sum of the square roots of contributions received. Under the "standard model" this yields first best public goods provision. Variations can limit the cost, help protect against collusion and aid coordination. We discuss applications to campaign finance, open source software ecosystems, news media finance and urban public projects. More broadly, we offer a resolution to the classic liberal-communitarian debate in political philosophy by providing neutral and non-authoritarian rules that nonetheless support collective organization.

Suggested Citation

  • Vitalik Buterin & Zoe Hitzig & E. Glen Weyl, 2018. "A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods," Papers 1809.06421, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2020.
  • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:1809.06421
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1809.06421
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dybvig, Philip H. & Spatt, Chester S., 1983. "Adoption externalities as public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 231-247, March.
    2. Joseph E. Stiglitz, 1977. "The Theory of Local Public Goods," International Economic Association Series, in: Martin S. Feldstein & Robert P. Inman (ed.), The Economics of Public Services, chapter 12, pages 274-333, Palgrave Macmillan.
    3. Alberto Alesina & Enrico Spolaore, 1997. "On the Number and Size of Nations," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(4), pages 1027-1056.
    4. Michael H. Rothkopf, 2007. "Thirteen Reasons Why the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves Process Is Not Practical," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 55(2), pages 191-197, April.
    5. Sunoo Park & Ronald L. Rivest, 2017. "Towards secure quadratic voting," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 151-175, July.
    6. William Vickrey, 1961. "Counterspeculation, Auctions, And Competitive Sealed Tenders," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 16(1), pages 8-37, March.
    7. 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.
    8. Bergstrom, Theodore & Blume, Lawrence & Varian, Hal, 1986. "On the private provision of public goods," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 25-49, February.
    9. Easterly, William, 2007. "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill And So Little Good," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199226115.
    10. Hylland, Aanund & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1979. "The Efficient Allocation of Individuals to Positions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(2), pages 293-314, April.
    11. Tabarrok, Alexander, 1998. "The Private Provision of Public Goods via Dominant Assurance Contracts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 96(3-4), pages 345-362, September.
    12. Edward Clarke, 1971. "Multipart pricing of public goods," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 11(1), pages 17-33, September.
    13. Arnott, Richard, 1996. "Taxi Travel Should Be Subsidized," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 316-333, November.
    14. Groves, Theodore, 1973. "Incentives in Teams," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 41(4), pages 617-631, July.
    15. Howard R. Bowen, 1943. "The Interpretation of Voting in the Allocation of Economic Resources," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 58(1), pages 27-48.
    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. Vitalik Buterin & Zoë Hitzig & E. Glen Weyl, 2019. "A Flexible Design for Funding Public Goods," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(11), pages 5171-5187, November.
    2. Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, 2017. "Quadratic voting and the public good: introduction," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(1), pages 1-22, July.
    3. 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.
    4. Maskin, Eric & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2002. "Implementation theory," Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare,in: K. J. Arrow & A. K. Sen & K. Suzumura (ed.), Handbook of Social Choice and Welfare, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 5, pages 237-288 Elsevier.
    5. Philippe Jehiel & Laurent Lamy, 2018. "A Mechanism Design Approach to the Tiebout Hypothesis," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 126(2), pages 735-760.
    6. Ledyard, John O., "undated". "Public Goods: A Survey of Experimental Research," Working Papers 861, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
    7. Jackson, Matthew & Moulin, Hervé, 1992. "Implementing a public project and distributing its cost," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 125-140.
    8. Ratul Lahkar & Vinay Ramani, 2022. "An Evolutionary Approach to Pollution Control in Competitive Markets," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 872-896, September.
    9. Matt Van Essen, 2013. "Making efficient public good decisions using an augmented Ausubel auction," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 1(1), pages 57-68, May.
    10. Miyagawa, Eiichi, 2001. "House Allocation with Transfers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(2), pages 329-355, October.
    11. Vohra, Rakesh V., 2015. "Combinatorial Auctions," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    12. Sarvesh Bandhu & Ratul Lahkar, 2021. "Implementation in Large Population Games with Multiple Equilibria," Working Papers 62, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    13. Ronald M. Harstad & Aleksandar Saša Pekeč, 2008. "Relevance to Practice and Auction Theory: A Memorial Essay for Michael Rothkopf," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 38(5), pages 367-380, October.
    14. Roberta Occhilupo & Giuliana Palumbo & Paolo Sestito, 2011. "Siting public facilities: a theoretical and empirical analysis of the Nimby syndrome in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 91, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    15. 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.
    16. Steven Lalley & Glen Weyl, 2015. "Quadratic Voting," Working Papers 2016-13, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    17. Vijay Krishna & Motty Perry, 1997. "Efficient Mechanism Design," Game Theory and Information 9703010, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 28 Apr 1998.
    18. Monique Florenzano, 2009. "From equilibrium models to mechanism design: On the place and the role of government in the public goods provision analysis in the second part of the twentieth century," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00367859, HAL.
    19. Nath, Swaprava & Sandholm, Tuomas, 2019. "Efficiency and budget balance in general quasi-linear domains," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 673-693.
    20. Monique Florenzano, 2010. "Government and the provision of public goods:from equilibrium models to mechanismdesign," The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 1047-1077.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:1809.06421. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.