This paper studies the relation between Bayesian mechanism design and the Ramsey-Boiteux approach to the provision and pricing of excludable public goods. For a large economy with private information about individual preferences, the two approaches are shown to be equivalent if and only if, in addition to incentive compatibility and participation constraints, the …nal allocation of private-good...

We explore in an experiment what leads to the breakdown of partnerships. Subjects are assigned a partner and participate in a repeated public good game with stochastic outcomes. They can choose each period between staying in the public project or working on their own. There is excessive exit as subjects overestimate the likelihood their partner will leave. High barriers to exit thus improve wel...

This experiment shows that Mathew Rabin’s (1993) fairness equilibrium is more descriptive than the relevant null hypothesis, that people’s generosity levels are innate. Participants treated others as they expected others to treat them. Prospective reciprocation creates path dependency in organizations’ cooperation levels. Organization member’s expectations of others’ willingness to cooperate ma...

We study the effect that the possibility of investing in cultural education has on the voluntary contributions to a cultural good. This is done in a two-stage public-good experiment. We also provide treatments with different context in order to control for a possible framing effect. Our results show the absence of an effect of cultural education on the contributions to the cultural good and a s...

Happy Taxpayers? Income Taxation and Well-Being This paper offers a first empirical investigation of how labor taxation (income and payroll taxes) affects individuals' well-being. For identification, we exploit exogenous variation in tax rules over time and across demographic groups using 26 years of German panel data. We find that the tax effect on subjective well-being is significant and posi...

We empirically investigate the effect of the payment mechanism on contingent values by asking a willingness-to-pay question with one of three different payment mechanisms: individual contribution, contribution with provision point, and referendum. We Ž nd statistical evidence of more afŽ rmative responses in the referendum treatment relative to the individual contribution treatment, some weak s...

We experimentally investigate the Jackson and Moselle (2002) model where legislators bargain over policy proposals and the allocation of private goods. Key comparative static predictions of the model hold with the introduction of private goods, including “strange bedfellow” coalitions. Private goods help to secure legislative compromise and increase the likelihood of proposals passing, an outco...

This paper studies how a politician’s preferences and abilities to influence public and private sector productivity affect her choices over economic policies. Extremism between policies of leftand right-wing incumbents increases with ability, because voters are more willing to re-elect competent politicians. Positive correlations between certain ability dimensions and preferences amplify politi...

This paper uses a two-region, two-period overlapping generations model with international labor mobility to examine the efficacy of using tax policy to internalize the externalities created by international labor migration. While a brain drain tax has a substantial limiting effect on labor migration and a small negative effect on per worker growth, it is found to be a viable solution to the neg...

In a laboratory experiment with salient rewards, subjects were endowed with money and waiting time. Preferences for waiting time were elicited both as a private good by means of a series of second price auctions, i.e., in a non-induced values framework, and as a public good in the scope of a voluntary contribution game. Our data supports the Lindahl equilibrium as a descriptive model of behavio...