Cooperation can be induced by an authority with the power to mete out sanctions for free riders, but law enforcement is prone to error. This paper experimentally analyzes preferences for and consequences of errors in formal sanctions against free riders in a public goods game. With type I...

Animal welfare is often cited as a classic public good, which implies market failure and, thus, that government intervention is required. However, the current literature does not provide an accessible account of how governed markets are supposed to cope with the issues of animal welfare. This...

I derive the value of marginal changes in a public good for two-person households, measured alternatively by household member i’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the good on behalf of the household, WTPi(H), or by the sum of individual WTP values across family members, WTP(C). Households are...

I derive the marginal value of a public good in multiperson households, measured alternatively by one household member’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the good on behalf of the household, or by the sum of individual WTP values across family members. Households are assumed to allocate their...

When public goods can only be provided when donations cross a minimum threshold, this creates an advantage in that Pareto Efficient outcomes can be Nash Equilibria. Despite this, experiments have shown that groups struggle to coordinate on one of the many efficient equilibria. We apply a...

We investigate the endogenous formation of sanctioning institutions supposed to improve efficiency in the voluntary provision of public goods. Our paper parallels Markussen et al. (Rev Econ Stud 81:301–324, <CitationRef CitationID="CR24">2014</CitationRef>) in that our experimental subjects vote over formal versus informal sanctions, but...</citationref>