In a public good economy the distribution of initial income is an important determinant of how many individuals contribute to the public good. For the case when all individuals have identical preferences in this paper a simple formula is derived that describes the proportion of all income...

We present a rigorous, yet elementary, demonstration of the existence of a unique Lindahl equilibrium under the assumptions that characterize the standard n-player public good model. Indeed, our approach, which exploits the aggregative structure of the public good model, lends itself to a...

When providing public goods through voluntary contributions, a donor may introduce unilateral matching in order to reduce underprovision of the public good and thus inefficiency. By itself, however, matching benefits the donor but harms the recipient. We apply Cornes and Hartley's aggregative...

The Lindahl equilibrium is mostly motivated by a rather artificial price mechanism. Even though the analogy to a competitive market has been emphasised by Lindahl himself his approach does not directly explain the normative ideas, which are behind this concept. In the present paper we therefore...

Applying a willingness to pay approach known from contingent valuation in environmental economics, we develop an ordinally based measure for the size of individual sacrifice that is connected with an agent's contribution to a public good. We construct a selection mechanism that picks the unique...

In this paper we explore the relationship between an equitable distribution of the cost shares in public-good provision on the one hand and the core property of an allocation on the other. In particular we show that it is an inhomogeneous distribution of cost shares that motivates some coalition...

Using the aggregative game approach as developed by Cornes and Hartley (2003, 2007) this paper analyzes the conditions under which matching mechanisms in a public good economy lead to interior matching equilibria in which all agents make strictly positive flat contributions to the public good....

Matching mechanisms are regarded as an important instrument to bring about Pareto optimal allocations in a public good economy and to cure the underprovision problem associated with private provision of public goods. The desired Pareto optimal interior matching equilibrium, however, emerges only...

In many empirically relevant situations agents in different groups are affected by the provision of a public characteristic in divergent ways: While for one group it represents a public good, it is a public bad for another group. Applying Cornes’ and Hartley’s (2007) Aggregative Game...

In this paper we show how the Kolm triangle method, which is a standard tool for visualizing allocations in a public good economy, can also be used to provide a diagrammatical exposition of matching mechanisms and their effects on public good supply and welfare. In particular, we describe, on...