This paper studies the design of optimal utilitarian mechanisms for an excludable public good. Excludability provides a basis for making people pay for admissions; the payments can be used for redistribution and/or funding. Whereas previous work assumed that admissions are governed by the...

We characterize the second-best public-goods provision rule with an inequality-averse principal. Our main results show how the provision rule reacts to variations of an exogenous budget available for public-goods provision when the principal exhibits different levels of inequality aversion.

In this investigation, we analyze a network formation game in a strategic setting where pay-offs of individuals depend only on their immediate neighbourhood. These localized pay-offs incorporate the social capital emanating from bridging positions that nodes hold in the network. Using this...