Membership in citizen groups

Stefano Barbieri () and Andrea Mattozzi

Games and Economic Behavior, 2009, vol. 67, issue 1, 217-232

Abstract: We analyze the coordination problem of agents deciding to join a group that uses membership revenues to provide a discrete public good and excludable benefits. The public good and the benefits are jointly produced, so that benefits are valued only if the group succeeds in providing the public good. With asymmetric information about the cost of provision, the static membership game admits a unique equilibrium and we characterize the optimal membership fee. We show that heterogeneity in valuations for the excludable benefits is always detrimental to the group. However, in a dynamic contest in which heterogeneity arises endogenously (returning members receive additional seniority benefits at the expense of junior members), we show that, in the ex-ante optimal contract, offering seniority benefits is beneficial for the group, despite the heterogeneity in valuations created.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899-8256(08)00201-7
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Membership in Citizen Groups (2009)
Working Paper: Membership in Citizen Groups (2004)
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:eee:gamebe:v:67:y:2009:i:1:p:217-232

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().