Pro-Rich and Progressive: Policy Selection and Contributions in Threshold Public Goods Experiments

Luca Corazzini, Christopher Cotton, Enrico Longo () and Tommaso Reggiani ()
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Enrico Longo: Unviersity of Venice

No 1471, Working Paper from Economics Department, Queen's University

Abstract: Experiments with multiple threshold public goods provide insight into how groups overcome coordination issues to collectively select and fund one option from a set of alternatives. We investigate how funding, selection, and success of public goods are impacted by endowment and preference heterogeneity. Groups tend to focus on and successfully fund the option that is preferred by the wealthiest group member, demonstrating a wealthy-interest policy bias even in the absence of corruption, politics, and information asymmetries. At the same time, we demonstrate how groups converge to divide costs in highly progressive ways, with differences in voluntary contributions mostly offsetting differences in endowments or benefits received. We discuss implications for policy selection, charitable giving, and public finance.

Keywords: pro-rich bias; lab experiment; public goods; threshold public goods; philanthropy; crowdfunding; campaign contributions; fundraising; policy selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 H40 H41 L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 51 pages
Date: 2022-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:qed:wpaper:1471

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