 Coordinated selection of collective action: Wealthy-interest bias and inequalityLuca Corazzini, Christopher Cotton, Enrico Longo and Tommaso Reggiani () Journal of Public Economics, 2024, vol. 238, issue C Abstract: We extend a collective action problem to study policy and project selection by heterogeneous groups who prefer to work together on a joint initiative but may disagree on which initiative is best. Our framework, adapted from a model of multiple threshold public goods, presents groups with several mutually exclusive projects, any of which require sufficient support from the group to succeed. Individuals strictly prefer to contribute where and how much they believe others expect of them to ensure joint project success. Groups tend to coordinate on the public good preferred by the wealthiest member, demonstrating a wealthy-interest bias even without corruption, politics, and information asymmetries. At the same time, groups divide costs in highly progressive ways, with the wealthy voluntarily funding a disproportionate share, helping offset the inherent inequality from endowment and selection differences. We discuss applications for policy selection, charitable giving, and taxes. Keywords: Multiple public goods; Donor heterogeneity; Crowdfunding; Lab experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:238:y:2024:i:c:s0047272724001087 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2024.105172 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economics is currently edited by R. Boadway and J. Poterba More articles in Journal of Public Economics from Elsevier |
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