Efficient Mechanisms for Public Goods with Use Exclusions

Constrained efficient provision of an excludable public good is studied in amodel where preferences are private information. The provision level isasymptotically deterministic, making it possible to approximate the optimalmechanism with a mechanism that provides a fixed quantity of the goodand charges fixed user fees for access. In general, the fixed fees involvethird degree price discrimination, but, if names are uninformative aboutpreferences, the analysis provides a justification for average cost pricing. Copyright The Review of Economic Studies Limited, 2004.