Transparency and accountability are often regarded as crucial for good governance and the efficient organization of public affairs. To systematically explore the impact of transparency and accountability on cooperation, we conduct a series of laboratory experiments on a variation of the public...

We study the voluntary provision of a discrete public good via the contribution game. Players independently and simultaneously make nonrefundable contributions to fund a discrete public good, which is provided if and only if the contributions are at least as great as the cost of production. We...

Consider a mechanism for the binary public good provision problem that is dominant strategy incentive compatible (DSIC), ex-post individually rational (EPIR), and ex-post budget balanced (EPBB). Suppose this mechanism has the additional property that the utility from participating in the...

We analyze a symmetric Bayesian game in which two players individually contribute to fund a discrete public good; contributions are refunded if they do not meet a threshold set by the seller of the good. We provide a general characterization of symmetric equilibrium strategies that are continuous...

We reconsider Laussel and Palfrey's (2003) analysis of private provision of a discrete public good via the subscription game. We show that the equilibria they define as semi-regular do not exist. Taking players' values for the public good as uniformly distributed on [vl, vh] with vl 0, we...

We consider a (pure) public goods provision problem with voluntary participation in a quasi-linear economy. We propose a new hybrid solution concept, the free-riding-proof core (FRP-Core), which endogenously determines a contribution group, public goods provision level, and how to share the...

Conditional cooperation is an important factor in voluntary cooperation. Fehr and Schmidt (1999) show that in public good games conditional cooperation among rational players is feasible if cooperators are sufficiently inequality averse and if there are not too many free riders. The derived...