IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cir/cirwor/2010s-06.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competitive Private Supply of Public Goods

Author

Listed:
  • Arnaud Dragicevic
  • Guy Meunier

Abstract

This paper compares guilt alleviation and competition for social status in the private provision of a public good. When agents are intrinsically impulsed, that is, they mostly provide the public good in order to alleviate their guilt, they tend to free-ride. In contrast, when agents are extrinsically impulsed and compete for social status, their provisions become strategic complements. In the latter case, the aggregate level of the public good increases as the disparity between agents' incomes shrinks. In the see-through scenario, subsidizing has an ambiguous impact on the aggregate level of the public good. In any case, injecting competition for social status into utility functions increases provisions to a public good, and hence its aggregate level. Market competition thus creates incentives to overcome the free-riding issue. Le papier fait la comparaison entre déculpabilisation et compétition pour le statut social dans la provision privée des biens publics. Lorsque les agents sont intrinsèquement impulsés, c'est-à-dire qu'ils contribuent essentiellement aux biens publics dans le but de soulager leur culpabilité d'avoir indirectement participé à leur dégradation, ils tendent à se comporter en passagers clandestins. En revanche, lorsque les agents sont extrinsèquement impulsés et se mettent en compétition pour atteindre du statut social qu'ils visent par le financement des biens publics à titre privé, leurs contributions deviennent des compléments stratégiques. Dans ce cas, le niveau agrégé des biens publics croît avec la réduction des écarts de revenus entre les agents. Dans un scénario de transparence fiscale, les subventions ont un impact ambigu sur le niveau global des biens publics. Dans tous les cas, injecter de la compétition pour le statut social dans des fonctions d'utilité augmente les contributions aux biens publics, et donc leur niveau global, faisant de la concurrence une incitation féconde pour résoudre le problème du passager clandestin.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnaud Dragicevic & Guy Meunier, 2010. "Competitive Private Supply of Public Goods," CIRANO Working Papers 2010s-06, CIRANO.
  • Handle: RePEc:cir:cirwor:2010s-06
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cirano.qc.ca/files/publications/2010s-06.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jean Tirole & Roland Bénabou, 2006. "Incentives and Prosocial Behavior," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1652-1678, December.
    2. Kenneth S. Chan & Stuart Mestelman & Rob Moir & R. Andrew Muller Moir, 1996. "The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods under Varying Income Distributions," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 29(1), pages 54-69, February.
    3. Chan, Kenneth S. & Mestelman, Stuart & Muller, R. Andrew, 2008. "Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, in: Charles R. Plott & Vernon L. Smith (ed.), Handbook of Experimental Economics Results, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 88, pages 831-835, Elsevier.
    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. Kenneth Chan & Stuart Mestelman & Robert Moir & R. Muller, 1999. "Heterogeneity and the Voluntary Provision of Public Goods," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(1), pages 5-30, August.
    2. Fangfang Tan, 2008. "Punishment in a Linear Public Good Game with Productivity Heterogeneity," De Economist, Springer, vol. 156(3), pages 269-293, September.
    3. Fabian Winter, 2013. "Fairness norms can explain the emergence of specific cooperation norms in the Battle of the Prisoners Dilemma," Jena Economics Research Papers 2013-016, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena.
    4. Jonathan Maurice & Agathe Rouaix & Marc Willinger, 2013. "Income Redistribution And Public Good Provision: An Experiment," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 54(3), pages 957-975, August.
    5. Lisa Anderson & Jennifer Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2006. "Induced heterogeneity in trust experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(3), pages 223-235, September.
    6. Chan, Kenneth S. & Godby, Rob & Mestelman, Stuart & Andrew Muller, R., 2002. "Crowding-out voluntary contributions to public goods," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 305-317, July.
    7. repec:wil:wileco:2011-14 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Lisa R. Anderson & Jennifer M. Mellor & Jeffrey Milyo, 2003. "Inequality, Group Cohesion, and Public Good Provision: An Experimental Analysis," Working Papers 0308, Harris School of Public Policy Studies, University of Chicago.
    9. Greiner, Ben & Ockenfels, Axel & Werner, Peter, 2012. "The dynamic interplay of inequality and trust—An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 355-365.
    10. Martin Beckenkamp, 2006. "A game-theoretic taxonomy of social dilemmas," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 14(3), pages 337-353, September.
    11. Balafoutas, Loukas & Kocher, Martin G. & Putterman, Louis & Sutter, Matthias, 2013. "Equality, equity and incentives: An experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 32-51.
    12. Weng, Qian & Carlsson, Fredrik, 2015. "Cooperation in teams: The role of identity, punishment, and endowment distribution," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 25-38.
    13. Alexander Smith, "undated". "Group Composition and Conditional Cooperation," Working Papers 2010-11, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 19 Jan 2010.
    14. Kenneth S. Chan & Stuart Mestelman & R. Andrew Muller, 1997. "Three Essays in Experimental Economics: Market Performance, Voluntary Contributions to Public Goods, and Emission Permit Trading," Department of Economics Working Papers 1997-03, McMaster University.
    15. Jeff Dayton-Johnson & Pranab Bardhan, 2002. "Inequality And Conservation On The Local Commons: A Theoretical Exercise," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(481), pages 577-602, July.
    16. Agathe Rouaix & Charles Figuières & Marc Willinger, 2015. "The trade-off between welfare and equality in a public good experiment," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 45(3), pages 601-623, October.
    17. Reuben, Ernesto & Riedl, Arno, 2013. "Enforcement of contribution norms in public good games with heterogeneous populations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 122-137.
    18. Felix Koelle, 2012. "Heterogeneity and Cooperation in Privileged Groups: The Role of Capability and Valuation on Public Goods Provision," Cologne Graduate School Working Paper Series 03-08, Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences.
    19. Hopkins, Ed & Kornienko, Tatiana, 2006. "Inequality and growth in the presence of competition for status," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(2), pages 291-296, November.
    20. Zoe Van der Hoven & Martine Visser & Kerri Brick, 2012. "Contribution Norms in Heterogeneous Groups: A Climate Change Framing," SALDRU Working Papers 77, Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit, University of Cape Town.
    21. John Spraggon, 2003. "Exogenous Targeting Instruments with Heterogeneous Agents," McMaster Experimental Economics Laboratory Publications 2003-02, McMaster University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    public good private supply; guilt relieving; social status; competition; income transfer; subsidies; provision privée des biens publics; déculpabilisation; statut social; compétition; transfert de revenu; subventions;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • A13 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - Relation of Economics to Social Values
    • C7 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory
    • H2 - Public Economics - - Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue
    • H41 - Public Economics - - Publicly Provided Goods - - - Public Goods

    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:cir:cirwor:2010s-06. 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: Webmaster (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ciranca.html .

    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.