Public goods, group size, and provision aggregation

Weifeng Larry Liu and Todd Sandler

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2024, vol. 223, issue C, 146-167

Abstract: The paper examines the effects of group size on private provision of public goods, focusing on the influence of public good aggregator technologies through which individual contributions determine overall public good provision. We propose a general aggregator that encompasses existing aggregators, accommodates rivalrous public goods, and includes several interesting novel sub-aggregators. Our study of a wide range of aggregators indicates that the effects of group size on public good supply hinges on aggregator structures, thereby highlighting aggregators’ importance for the prognosis of policy intervention. The analysis here between aggregators and group size goes well beyond that of the extant literature. In the presence of income heterogeneity, the paper explores how an entrant affects public good provision for alternative aggregator technologies, which has important implications for income transfer policy of achieving Pareto-improving outcomes. An aggregative game approach greatly facilitates the depiction of group-size changes in equilibrium.

Keywords: Public goods; Group size; Aggregator technologies; Aggregative game approach; Income heterogeneity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 H41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016726812400163X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jeborg:v:223:y:2024:i:c:p:146-167

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2024.04.028

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().