We investigate the effect of priming on pro-social behaviour in a setting where there is a clear financial incentive to free ride. By activating the concept of cooperation among randomly selected individuals, we explore whether it is possible to positively influence people's voluntary contributions to the public good. Our findings indicate that cooperative priming increases contributions in a o...

This article considers merits and drawbacks of undetectable = untransmissible (U U) messaging in the global HIV response. First, viral suppression might be achieved with effective treatment, but not everyone living has access to such intervention care. Second, although U can help individuals HIV, this stigmatize those for whom interventions have suppression. Third, biomedical advances attempted...

We examine a setup where two agents allocate fixed budget between public goods in areas. The may be biased to one area, which is their private information. Without communication, the funds are allocated inefficiently, resulting gaps and duplication good provision. Direct communication ineffective cannot resolve coordination failure even when potential biases negligible. Coordination can improve...

Diversity is a key issue in the provision of critical publicly provided goods such as clean drinking water and education. To develop institutions that address this issue, it is critical that we understand the mechanisms through which diversity and public goods are related. A simple model of public good provision is developed to demonstrate that there are potentially measurable differences betwe...

Climate change is the exemplary global public good, because each country’s emissions of greenhouse gases contribute cumulatively to the increase of the overall concentration, and each country’s abatements entail higher cost than benefit, unless effective concerted collective actions

Standard game theory cannot describe microbial interactions mediated by diffusible molecules. Nevertheless, we show that one can still model microbial dynamics using game theory with parameters renormalized by diffusion. Contrary to expectations, greater sharing of metabolites reduces the strength of cooperation and leads to species extinction via a nonequilibrium phase transition. We report an...

The fundamental question addressed in this paper is this: does the rise of free market orthodoxy indicate the triumph of ‘efficiency’ at the expense of ‘equity’? Or does it also, and possibly even primarily, reflect an attempt to capitalise on the distributive opportunities that have been created by the deteriorating macroeconomic environment and the conservative political climate of the late ‘...