EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Complementarity in the Private Provision of Public Goods by Homo Pecuniarius and Homo Behavioralis

Guidon Fenig, Giovanni Gallipoli (gallipol@mail.ubc.ca) and Yoram Halevy

Microeconomics.ca working papers from Vancouver School of Economics

Abstract: We examine coordination in private provision of public goods when agents' contributions are complementary. When complementarity is sufficiently high an additional full-contribution equilibrium emerges. We experimentally investigate subjects’ behavior using a between-subject design that varies complementarity. When two equilibria exist, subjects coordinate on the full-contribution equilibrium. When complementarity is sizable but only a zero-contribution equilibrium exists, subjects persistently contribute above it. Observed choices and and other nonchoice data indicate heterogeneity among subjects and two distinct types. Homo pecuniarius maximizes profits by best-responding to beliefs, while Homo behavioralis identifies this strategy but chooses to deviate from it – sacrificing pecuniary rewards to support altruism or competitiveness.

Keywords: Public goods; Voluntary Contribution Mechanism; Complementarity; Coordination; Altruism; Competitiveness; Warm-Glow; Joy of Winning; Laboratory Experi (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C92 D03 D83 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 60 pages
Date: 2015-11-15, Revised 2016-05-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/yhalevy/VCMC.pdf
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ubc:pmicro:yoram_halevy-2015-21

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Microeconomics.ca working papers from Vancouver School of Economics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maureen Chin (maureen.chin@ubc.ca).

 
Page updated 2025-02-21
Handle: RePEc:ubc:pmicro:yoram_halevy-2015-21