Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods?

Béatrice Boulu-Reshef, Samuel Brott () and Adam Zylbersztejn ()
Additional contact information
Samuel Brott: Berkeley Research Group, LLC
Adam Zylbersztejn: GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - ENS de Lyon - École normale supérieure de Lyon - Université de Lyon - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UCBL - Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 - Université de Lyon - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We study a finitely repeated public goods game (based on the voluntary contribution mechanism) played under complete uncertainty about the marginal benefit of the public good relative to the private consumption (commonly known as the marginal per capita return): neither one's marginal per capita return nor other players' marginal per capita returns are known at the time of decision-making. We show that contributions are equivalent when the rate of return is predetermined and when it is uncertain, and display a similar decay over time. Combined with the previous experimental findings, our results suggest that the cooperation in public goods games is sensitive to the source of uncertainty about marginal per capita return.

Keywords: Cooperation; uncertainty; voluntary contribution mechanism; public good; expected return; incertitude; mécanisme de contribution volontaire; bien public; rendement attendu (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-01
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01441053v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published in 2017

Downloads: (external link)
https://shs.hal.science/halshs-01441053v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods? (2017)
Working Paper: Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods? (2017)
Working Paper: Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods? (2017)
Working Paper: Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods? (2017)
Working Paper: Does Uncertainty Deter Provision of Public Goods? (2017)
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:hal:journl:halshs-01441053

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().