A network approach to public goods: a comment

Matthew Elliott, Mathieu Faure, Benjamin Golub and Kohmei Makihara
Additional contact information
Matthew Elliott: CAM - University of Cambridge [Cambridge, UK]
Mathieu Faure: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Benjamin Golub: Northwestern University [Evanston]
Kohmei Makihara: UOsaka - The University of Osaka

Working Papers from HAL

Abstract: Elliott and Golub (2019) study local public goods in a favor-trading model. Proposition 2 (p. 746) asserts that either zero is Pareto efficient or there is a nonzero action profile at which every agent is first-order indifferent to a proportional change in all actions. Under the paper's assumptions, these centrality action profiles are Lindahl equilibrium actions. The existence claim is correct, but the proof is incorrect. Section 3 explains the errors in the constructions of the original proof, and Appendix A gives details and shows how those constructions can be repaired within the structure of that proof. Section 4 replaces the assumption of concavity of agents' utility functions by a substantially weaker condition called quasi-concavity at the origin and establishes a stronger existence result with a simpler proof. Both proofs work directly with actions, without the use of prices. In the course of proving the main proposition, we correct another error in Elliott and Golub (2019): the omission of connectedness from the assumptions of Proposition 1.

Date: 2026-10-20
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-05845584v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-05845584v1/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:wpaper:hal-05845584

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().