This paper studies public good provision in the laboratory using voluntary contribution mechanism, in a cross-cultural experiment conducted in the United States and Japan.

Groves-Ledyard (1977) constructed a mechanism attaining Pareto efficient allocations in the presence of public goods. After this path-breaking paper, many mechanisms have been proposed to attain desirable allocations with public goods. Thus, economists have thought that the free-rider problem is...

Groves-Ledyard (1977) constructed a mechanism attaining Pareto efficient allocations in the presence of public goods. After this path-breaking paper, many mechanisms have been proposed to attain desirable allocations with public goods. Thus, economists have thought that the free-rider problem is...

The EU proposal on the quantity restraint of the emissions trading in the Kyoto Protocol aims at reducing the so called hot air that would be generated by the purchase of emissions permits sold by a country whose actual emissions are much lower than the assigned amount. In this paper we show...

This paper studies public good provision in the laboratory using the voluntary contribution mechanism, in a cross-cultural experiment conducted in the United States and Japan. Our environment differs from the standard voluntary contribution mechanism because in one treatment, subjects first...