IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fem/femwpa/2008.23.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Contributing or Free-Riding? A Theory of Endogenous Lobby Formation

Author

Listed:
  • Hideo Konishi

    (Boston College)

  • Taiji Furusawa

    (Hitotsubashi University)

Abstract

We consider a two-stage public goods provision game: In the first stage, players simultaneously decide if they will join a contribution group or not. In the second stage, players in the contribution group simultaneously offer contribution schemes in order to influence the government’s choice on the level of provision of public goods. Using perfectly coalition-proof Nash equilibrium (Bernheim, Peleg and Whinston, 1987 JET), we show that the set of equilibrium outcomes is equivalent to an "intuitive" hybrid solution concept, the free-riding-proof core, which is always nonempty but does not necessarily achieve global efficiency. It is not necessarily true that an equilibrium lobby group is formed by the players with highest willingness-to-pay, nor is it a consecutive group with respect to their willingnesses-to-pay. We also show that the equilibrium level of public goods provision shrinks to zero as the economy is replicated.

Suggested Citation

  • Hideo Konishi & Taiji Furusawa, 2008. "Contributing or Free-Riding? A Theory of Endogenous Lobby Formation," Working Papers 2008.23, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    • Handle: RePEc:fem:femwpa:2008.23
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://feem-media.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/NDL2008-023.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Groves, Theodore & Ledyard, John O, 1977. "Optimal Allocation of Public Goods: A Solution to the "Free Rider" Problem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(4), pages 783-809, May.
    2. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1984. "Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 171-193, July.
    3. Jackson, Matthew O. & Palfrey, Thomas R., 2001. "Voluntary Implementation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 1-25, May.
    4. Laussel, Didier & Le Breton, Michel, 2001. "Conflict and Cooperation: The Structure of Equilibrium Payoffs in Common Agency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 93-128, September.
    5. Konishi, Hideo & Le Breton, Michel & Weber, Shlomo, 1999. "On Coalition-Proof Nash Equilibria in Common Agency Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 122-139, March.
    6. Grossman, Gene M & Helpman, Elhanan, 1994. "Protection for Sale," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(4), pages 833-850, September.
    7. Foley, Duncan K, 1970. "Lindahl's Solution and the Core of an Economy with Public Goods," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 38(1), pages 66-72, January.
    8. Laussel, Didier & Le Breton, Michel, 1998. "Efficient Private Production of Public Goods under Common Agency," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 25(2), pages 194-218, November.
    9. L. Hurwicz, 1979. "Outcome Functions Yielding Walrasian and Lindahl Allocations at Nash Equilibrium Points," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 46(2), pages 217-225.
    10. Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Yamato, Takehiko, 1999. "A Voluntary Participation Game with a Non-excludable Public Good," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 227-242, February.
    11. Milleron, Jean-Claude, 1972. "Theory of value with public goods: A survey article," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 419-477, December.
    12. Devashish Mitra, 2016. "Endogenous Lobby Formation and Endogenous Protection: A Long-Run Model of Trade Policy Determination," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Political Economy of Trade Policy Theory, Evidence and Applications, chapter 1, pages 3-21, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    13. Carraro,Carlo & Siniscalco,Domenico (ed.), 1997. "New Directions in the Economic Theory of the Environment," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521590891, September.
    14. Ray, Debraj, 2007. "A Game-Theoretic Perspective on Coalition Formation," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199207954.
    15. Debraj Ray & Rajiv Vohra, 2001. "Coalitional Power and Public Goods," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(6), pages 1355-1384, December.
    16. Conley John P., 1994. "Convergence Theorems on the Core of a Public Goods Economy: Sufficient Conditions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 161-185, February.
    17. 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.
    18. Maruta, Toshimasa & 丸田, 利昌 & Okada, Akira & 岡田, 章, 2005. "Group Formation and Heterogeneity in Collective Action Games," Discussion Papers 2005-07, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    19. Le Breton, Michel & Salanie, Francois, 2003. "Lobbying under political uncertainty," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(12), pages 2589-2610, December.
    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. Furusawa, Taiji & ,, 2011. "Contributing or free-riding? Voluntary participation in a public good economy," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(2), May.
    2. Hideo Konishi & Ryusuke Shinohara, 2014. "Voluntary Participation and Provision of Public Goods in Large Finite Economies," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 16(2), pages 173-195, April.
    3. Graham Mallard, 2014. "Static Common Agency And Political Influence: An Evaluative Survey," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 17-35, February.
    4. 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.
    5. Takuma Wakayama & Takehiko Yamato, 2023. "Comparison of the voluntary contribution and Pareto-efficient mechanisms under voluntary participation," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(2), pages 517-553, June.
    6. Matsushima, Noriaki & Shinohara, Ryusuke, 2019. "Pre-negotiation commitment and internalization in public good provision through bilateral negotiations," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 84-93.
    7. 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.
    8. Martimort, David & Stole, Lars, 2011. "Public Contracting in Delegated Agency Games," MPRA Paper 32874, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Noriaki Matsushima & Ryusuke Shinohara, 2015. "The efficiency of monopolistic provision of public goods through simultaneous bilateral bargaining," ISER Discussion Paper 0948, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    10. Cason, Timothy N. & Saijo, Tatsuyoshi & Yamato, Takehiko & Yokotani, Konomu, 2004. "Non-excludable public good experiments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 81-102, October.
    11. Paul Pecorino, 2015. "Olson’s Logic of Collective Action at fifty," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 162(3), pages 243-262, March.
    12. John Duggan & Jacque Gao, 2020. "Lobbying as a multidimensional tug of war," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 54(1), pages 141-166, January.
    13. Laussel, Didier & Le Breton, Michel, 2001. "Conflict and Cooperation: The Structure of Equilibrium Payoffs in Common Agency," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 100(1), pages 93-128, September.
    14. Nizar Allouch, 2013. "A competitive equilibrium for a warm-glow economy," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 53(1), pages 269-282, May.
    15. Monique Florenzano, 2009. "Walras-Lindahl-Wicksell: What equilibrium concept for public goods provision," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00531434, HAL.
    16. Attar, Andrea & Majumdar, Dipjyoti & Piaser, Gwenaël & Porteiro, Nicolás, 2008. "Common agency games: Indifference and separable preferences," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 75-95, July.
    17. Martimort, David & Semenov, Aggey, 2008. "Ideological uncertainty and lobbying competition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(3-4), pages 456-481, April.
    18. Paul Healy, 2010. "Equilibrium participation in public goods allocations," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 14(1), pages 27-50, March.
    19. Martimort, David & Semenov, Aggey, 2007. "The pluralistic view of politics: Asymmetric lobbyists, ideological uncertainty and political entry," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 155-161, November.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Common Agency; Public Good; Free Rider; Core; Lobby; Coalition Formation; Coalition-proof Nash Equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • F13 - International Economics - - Trade - - - Trade Policy; International Trade Organizations
    • 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:fem:femwpa:2008.23. 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: Alberto Prina Cerai (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/feemmit.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.